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Tehran claimed that the tanker’s driver collided with and damaged an Egyptian vehicle in the Gulf of Oman when Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker last month.
Tehran announced nearly a year later that it will seize the goods of the Advantage Sweet, which was transferring petrol from Kuwait to Texas in response to terrible American sanctions against the Muslim state.
The Mizan news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s judiciary,  , reported , on March 6 that a Tehran court had ruled in favor of confiscating the oil, which is valued at around$ 50 million.
According to the 55th branch of the Tehran Court of Justice, funds raised from the price of the petrol will be used to pay medical bills to patients who have the unusual skin condition epidermolysis bullosa. According to the court, U.S. restrictions have prevented a Swedish firm from selling medication to Iran that treats the disease and has caused serious emotional and physical harm to Iranian patients.
EB Home, an Egyptian nongovernmental organization representing over 300 epidermolysis bullosa people, had , brought a case against the United States , in the Tehran judge. In a statement following the jury decision, the NGO described U. S. restrictions as” legal and unilateral”.
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, criticized the decision and demanded that the ship get “immediately released.”
” Iran’s continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights and freedoms in the region’s vital waterways is a threat to maritime security, regional stability, and the global economy” , , he said , in a press briefing on March 6.
The U. S. military , said , in January that Iran was “holding five boats and over 90 people captive” from vessels it seized in 2023. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ( IRGC), the elite branch of Iran’s armed forces, is responsible for the majority of Iranian tanker seizures.
Iran said it , seized the Advantage Sweet , in April 2023. According to deliver monitoring data, the ship was chartered by U.S. oil giant Chevron and was carrying petrol to the U.S. slot of Houston.
The United States  seized Suez Rajan, an oil tanker that was importing sanctioned Iranian fuel to China, days after Iran’s record of the Advantage Sweet.
Decades after seizing the Suez Rajan, and despite Tehran’s risks, Washington begun , unloading the boat’s oil , in August 2023.
Sanctions And ‘ Butterfly’ Clients
The Iranian prosecutor’s decision has highlighted the effects of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s healthcare system.
Trump formally withdrew Washington from a location nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers in 2018 and reinstituted sanctions against Tehran.
According to U.S. restrictions and corruption, Iranians have seen rising costs and shortages of life-saving medicines in recent years, including those for cancer treatment and glucose.
U. S. restrictions imposed on Iran exclude food and medicine. However, according to human rights organizations, the restrictions have actually made it difficult for Tehran to buy some medicines.
That includes special dressings made by the Swedish company Molnlycke to treat patients with epidermolysis bullosa, who frequently develop painful scars and wounds similar to third-degree fires. Due to the weakness of their body, they are occasionally referred to as “butterfly” people.
On March 6, Miller, a spokesman for the State Department, stated that U.S. restrictions “have usually had a carveout for charitable buying.”
” We have not prevented treatments from reaching the Egyptian people”, he added.
EB Home, the Persian NGO, had previously , filed an ineffective complaint , against Molnlycke in Sweden in 2021.
In its tried issue, the NGO , claimed , that Molnlycke had informed it in March 2019 letter that it had “decided never to do any company with reference to Iran for the time being. This also applies to enterprise conducted under any circumstances that the US economic restrictions apply.
In a 2021 , statement, United Nations authorities warned about the effects of “over- conformity” with U. S. sanctions on “butterfly kids”, who they said” can no longer like the right to health”.
The next year, the Finnish government , provided economic support , to the United Nations Children’s Fund to collect and give specific bandages to Iran.
” The lack of presence of certain medicines and health products in Iran is a charitable problem, affected by the impact of the sanctions regime on economic transactions”, Sweden’s subsequently- adviser to Iran, Mattias Lentz, said. We “hope a solution will be found and will continue to support such a solution.”
