TEHRAN has warned the United States and Israel against blocking an Iranian fuel tanker after it entered the Mediterranean Sea yesterday, two weeks after it set sail for Lebanon.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh insisted that it was not within Washington’s gift to stop Iran from helping alleviate Lebanon’s deepening fuel crisis, worsened due to US sanctions.

“The US is not in a position to block legitimate trade. We are very serious about exercising our sovereignty, and everyone should know that legitimate trade in this sphere is one of the basic principles of international law,” he said.

A second shipment of oil has also left its port in Iran, Tehran said yesterday, in a move that is believed to be the first major test of the US sanctions imposed by former president Donald Trump in 2018.

The punitive measures restricting Iranian oil exports were reinstated after the US pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, its aim being to exert “maximum pressure” on the Iranian government as part of broader plans for regime change.

The fuel to Lebanon deal was negotiated by the Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier this month; Lebanon’s mounting economic crisis, made more acute by the US’s Caesar Act sanctions aimed at neighbouring Syria’s regime, has seen shortages of fuel, electricity and basic food and medicines.

In a panicked response, US ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea said she was negotiating plans for oil shipments from Egypt to alleviate the shortages — a plan previously blocked by Washington. But Mr Nasrallah dismissed her announcement as “selling illusions to the Lebanese,” saying that, even if implemented, it could take a year to bring gas from Egypt to Lebanon.

Business owner Nour from Beirut’s Hamra district told the Morning Star that the current situation was “worse than during the civil war.” 

“At least then we had fuel and electricity,” she said, adding:  “To be honest I couldn’t care less who supplies the oil. Of course I support the Iranian shipment.”

“What has it got to do with the US? Our people are suffering. We can’t go on like this anymore. They are acting like bullies. But look at them in Afghanistan — they don’t care about people: just money and power.”

Yesterday lorry drivers blockaded the port in the Lebanese capital, refusing to load or unload goods until they are paid their salaries. Public-sector workers resumed work after walking out in a similar dispute.