According to IRNA's foreign policy group, the Marshall Islands-flagged ADVANTAGE SWEET oil tanker, which was carrying cargo belonging to the Chevron Oil Company, one of the largest oil companies in the United States, was confiscated by the ruling of Branch 55 of the Tehran Legal Court on March 6 in response to a decision by a Swedish company to block the sale and transfer of drugs needed by the patients of epidermolysis bullosa (EB) or butterfly patients.
Previously, the ship, which has a history of violations in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Makran, had been seized by the naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) when it was fleeing from a collision with an Iranian vessel. At that time, the oil tanker was carrying oil from Kuwait to a US port in Houston.
In recent years, especially after the United States began imposing crippling sanctions against Iran, the issue of drug embargo, which is a violation of the basic principles of human rights, has become a glaring example of Western hypocrisy.
Over the past 13 years, although the US officials have claimed that pharmaceutical items are exempt from sanctions against Iran, many pharmaceutical companies, especially those in the West, have refused to sell drugs to Iran for fear of heavy fines from the United States.
In the latest such case, the Swedish company that used to sell medicines needed by butterfly patients refused to sell these items to Iran due to the US sanctions and added insult to the injury of innocent children suffering from the rare skin disease.
The US and entering the game that is already a loser
With the passage of more than 40 years since the US sanctions against our country, and especially with the passage of more than 13 years since the maximum sanctions of this country against the people of Iran, today more than ever, the failure of the sanctions tool has been revealed.
Over the past years, the US and other Western countries have started a dangerous game by seizing cargoes and ships belonging to Iran that were sailing in open waters in a completely legal manner based on international law and maritime rights. Knowing their weakness in the case of Iran's legal response to this issue, they set foot on a path where they were already losers.
As one of the forms of the mutual dependence of the states on each other, shipping has long been an area in which the majority of countries avoided creating a crisis, and this was largely due to the benefit of all states from the security of free shipping and the loss of all countries from any crisis in the seas.
Well aware of this historical fact, the West used this issue as a tool to pressure other countries, especially its rivals and enemies. This issue, which is defined as “weaponized interdependence” in international relations, refers to the use of such capacities as a means of exerting pressure and control over others. It is a blatant violation of human rights and also applies to the cruel pharmaceutical embargo against our country.
With the beginning of this process in 2019 and the seizure of the oil tanker Grace-1 (Adrian Darya) in the Strait of Gibraltar, and the end of Iran's patience against the violations and environmental pollution of English ships in the Persian Gulf and the seizure of the Stena Impero ship, the designers of sanctions quickly came to know that this method is a failed one, but the American legislators and lobbyists of the Congress and the American government continued with this failed path.
Recently, there was an attempt to test Iran by confiscating the Iranian Suez Rajan oil tanker and offloading its cargo in Texas. However, after a short period of piracy by the US, the Iranian armed forces legally seized the cargo of the Greek-flagged oil tanker Suez Rajan in the Makran Sea, resulting in another defeat for the West.
Pharmaceutical sanctions as an instrument of pressure
Preventing the entry of medicine into the country and sanctioning drugs are among the cruelest forms of human rights violations, while International bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the United Nations Security Council remain silent.
This plan, which had previously tested and failed in the issue of not sending a COVID-19 vaccine to Iran, has again been used by the West on drugs and treatment items for specific diseases.
The West, and in particular the US, has turned medicine issues into militarizing interdependence forms. In such a cruel way, by sanctioning medicine and turning it into an instrument of pressure on Iran to accept the excessive demands of the West, not the Iranian government but the weakest layer of the Iranian nation is targeted and butterfly children become a kind of hostage by which the Iranian government is forced to surrender to the West and its disproportionate demands.
In response to such ominous plans, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran sent a clear message to the West by impounding the US ADVANTAGE SWEET oil cargo in the Persian Gulf as a result of the order issued by the court.
The significant message of the seizure was that not only will the Islamic Republic of Iran not succumb to the West's excessive demands by such wicked plans, but the continued process of turning medicine and medical items into tools of pressure against Iran will have more severe reactions; in other words, any action will have a reaction.
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