Turkey says that an Iranian oil tanker at the centre of a confrontation between Washington and Tehran is headed to Lebanon’s waters, but the United States later said the ship was sailing to Syria.
According to Refinitiv tracking data, the Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, after changing course several times headed on Friday for Turkey’s Iskenderun port, 200 km north of Syria’s Baniyas refinery, the tanker’s suspected original destination.
The latest twist sets it in the direction of Syria, and raises the possibility that a ship-to-ship transfer of cargo may be attempted once it nears Lebanon’s coast.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet late: “We have reliable information that the tanker is underway and headed to Tartus, Syria.”
Pompeo had earlier said that if the tanker went to Syria, Washington would take every action it could consistent with US sanctions.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said earlier that despite the tracking data, the tanker was “for sure” not going to Turkish ports but rather towards Lebanese waters.
Earlier on Friday, the minister told Reuters the ship was headed to Lebanon’s “main” port. “I didn’t mean that this tanker is going to a Lebanese port, but (rather) according to the information coordinates it is heading to the territorial waters of the country,” he later told reporters at an Oslo forum.
Read the article by Nerijus Adomaitis and Jonathan Spicer in The Canberra Times and The New Daily.