Eleven days after Gibraltar released a detained Iranian oil tanker in mid-August, over U.S. objections, the ship's Indian captain got an email from a top U.S. State Department official offering him several million dollars to steer the ship to a port where the U.S. could seize it, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The State Department then confirmed the offer and the new strategy to mix offers of cash and threats of sanctions or even jail to thwart Iranian oil shipments. "We have conducted extensive outreach to several ship captains as well as shipping companies," a State Department spokeswoman told AFP.
The ship's captain, Akhilesh Kumar, ignored the Aug. 26 offer of "good news" from Brian Hook, the head of the State Department's Iran Action Group, so Hook tried again. "With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age," he wrote Kumar two days later. "If you choose not to take this easy path, life will be much harder for you." Two days after that, on Friday, the U.S. slapped sanctions on Kumar and the ship, renamed the Adrian Darya 1. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the emails "outright blackmail" after failed "piracy."
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