Gibraltar says ‘NO’ to the United States

Gibraltar has rejected a second request of the United States to seize an Iranian ship, after it obeyed a first petition detaining it for six weeks.

A day after Gibraltar released Grace 1 on Aug. 15, the United States Department of Justice filed a request to detain the vessel again citing it had links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – which the US had designated as a terrorist group on April 8.

In a statement on Sunday, Gibraltar stressed that it could not comply with the request because the European Union does not view the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. That night, Grace 1, now called Adrian Darya 1, parted for Greece.

The statement also said that the EU cannot enforce American sanctions preventing oil exports from Iran and that there are “very different positions and legal regimes in the US and the EU”. Washington has not yet responded.

Gibraltar initially captured Grace 1 on July 4 upon request of the US, which suspected that the vessel was shipping oil to Syria and violated separate EU and US sanctions.

Thirty marines were flown from the UK to Gibraltar that day to help detain the tanker. The captain of Adrian Darya 1 has accused them of using “brute force” and making the unarmed crew kneel on the deck at gunpoint.

Iran responded by seizing British tanker Stena Impero on July 19 in the Strait of Hormuz accusing it of breaking international maritime law.

Forty-two days after seizing Grace 1, Gibraltar’s Supreme Court ruled on Aug. 15 in favour of releasing the supertanker stating that US sanctions against Iran did not apply in the EU.

The UK has announced, though, that it will join a US task-force to protect merchant ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.

Gibraltar, a colony of the British crown

Gibraltar, currently a tax haven, is in fact the last colony in Europe and appears on the UN’s list of territories to be decolonized in accordance with the resolutions of the General Assembly.

Spain ceded the Rock of Gibraltar to Great Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, but Great Britain has since then illegally extended its area. It built an airport during Spain’s Civil War inaugurating it in 1939.

Great Britain also uses Gibraltar’s waters, something which was neither signed in the Treaty of Utrecht or approved later by Spain in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (click here for Spanish ).

From 1701–1713, Spain had a war of succession on who should be king after King Carlos II died, childless. France and part of Spain claimed Charles III of Spain (Charles VI of the German-Roman Empire), while Great Britain, Holland and the other part of Spain claimed Philip V of Spain.

Great Britain won the war against France and promised to raise the Spanish flag at the Rock of Gibraltar. The day after raising it, it swapped the Spanish flag for the British flag – an act which was labelled “a shameless act of piracy” by the British Encyclopedia and by numerous British politicians up until about a century ago.

It is a known fact that since the discovery of the Americas, Great Britain would often commit acts of piracy attacking and robbing boats travelling back to the motherland, off of Spain’s own coast.

When Spain rightfully reclaims Gibraltar – or at least the land surrounding the Rock as well as its waters – the British often argue that the cities of Ceuta and Melilla should be given to Morocco.

But Ceuta and Melilla had strong ties with the Iberian Peninsula dating back to the Phoenicians and, unlike Gibraltar, the cities formed part of Spain before Morocco was even a country.

After taking 781 years to reconquer Spain from the Muslims, Spain also reconquered Ceuta and Melilla and rebuilt Melilla almost entirely in 1497.

Although there have been sovereignty referendums in 1967, 2002 and 2006 (a constitutional referendum) in Gibraltar, Spain reported to the UN in 2016, among several other points, that it was the restoration of Spanish territorial integrity that was the key, not self-determination.

The Treaty of Utrecht

Article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht states that Spain “yields to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar” but “without any territorial jurisdiction”, therefore Gibraltar does not have jurisdictional waters.

The United Kingdom justifies its colony quoting the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, that affirms that each country’s sovereign territorial waters extend to a maximum of 12 nautical miles (22 km) beyond its coast (foreign vessels are granted the right of innocent passage through this zone).

But article 15 of the Treaty stresses that “the above provision does not apply, however, where it is necessary by reason of historic title or other special circumstances to delimit the territorial seas of the two States in a way which is at variance therewith”. So the UNCLOS declaration did not change the fact that the Treaty of Utrecht did not grant Great Britain territorial jurisdiction of Gibraltar.

Also, both Spain and the UK ratified UNCLOS. Spain’s ratification, which was not accepted by the UK, stated, “In ratifying the Convention, Spain wishes to make it known that this act cannot be construed as recognition of any rights or status regarding the maritime space of Gibraltar that are not included in article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht of 13 July 1713 concluded between the Crowns of Spain and Great Britain. Furthermore, Spain does not consider that Resolution III of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea is applicable to the colony of Gibraltar, which is subject to a process of decolonization in which only relevant resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly are applicable.”

Britain applies the Treaty of Utrecht to legitimise its presence in Gibraltar, but not when it comes to the territoriality of the waters around the Rock.

London classified Gibraltar as a ‘British Overseas Territory’ in 2002, but , the European Union admitted it is a “a colony of the British crown” in 2019.