Professor Lawrence Brennan was interviewed by Al Jazeera regarding the complications surrounding the British seizure of an Iranian oil tanker in Gibralter.
It is not piracy. Piracy is an act by a non-nation state. This is an enforcement of legal procedures and sanctions that have been imposed over a number of years. The facts are important here, and the facts are changing, and they’ve changed in important natures this afternoon. […] Iran has never claimed to own the ship. The documents that were reported in the media [claimed]that the oil was Iraqi, not Iranian. So, what is Iran’s legal basis for making the argument [of ownership], unless they are conceding that they operated the ship and loaded the oil in contravention of the sanctions and in a duplicitous way?