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British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has decided to ease tensions with Tehran, saying that the Iranian oil tanker held by the authorities in Gibraltar would be released if he was guaranteed not to visit Syria .
the Grace 1 Tanke in oilr was seized earlier this month by British Royal Marines off the British Mediterranean coast, suspected of violating the EU's sanctions. on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Iran has since demanded that the ship be released and denied that it was carrying oil to Syria.
In a series of Twitter posts on Saturday, Hunt m said he had a "constructive call" with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on the question.
"I rebadured him [Zarif] Our concern was the destination, not the origin, of Grace One's oil and the fact that the United Kingdom would facilitate the release if we were guaranteed not to go to Syria, following due process before the United States. Gib's courts, "said Hunt.
"Foreign Minister Zarif told Iran that Iran wanted to solve the problem and was not trying to cope with escalation," he added.
A London report, Rory Challands of Al Jazeera, said that after days of rising tensions between Tehran and London – which has seen Britain deploy a second warship in the Gulf and that Iranian gunboats reportedly threatened a British supertanker in the oil-rich region – there was now "at least some diplomacy is going on".
Gibraltar denies the allegation of interference
Tehran accused the United States of organizing the seizure of the tanker.
Since the withdrawal of the historic agreement reached in 2015 between Iran and several other world powers in the nuclear field, Washington has imposed tough sanctions on Tehran and has decided to reduce its oil exports to zero.
European countries have no sanctions against Iran, but have put them in place against Syria since 2011.
The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, said Friday in front of the parliament of the territory that the decision to hold the tanker, which carried 2.1 million barrels of oil, was not taken at the request of 39, another country.
The Gibraltar police said that four arrested crew members, including the captain and the chief officer of the ship, had been released on bail without charge, but that the investigation was ongoing.
Hunt also said he had spoken with Zarif about the imprisonment of Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and Zarif "said he would continue to seek a solution" to his record.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a dual British and Iranian citizen serving a five-year prison sentence in Iran for alleged spying. Iran does not recognize dual nationality.
A 41 years old Employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, She was jailed in July 2016, three months after her first arrest at Tehran airport while she was returning to Britain.
She often denied the sedition charges brought against her, insisting that she was in the country during a family visit with her daughter.
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