Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 21
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
A legal experts' team from the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) visited the UK to discuss over the new ban imposed on the company.
The delegation negotiated with the UK side on the legal aspects of the bans, a source in the company announced on condition of anonymity, Fars news agency reported Feb. 21.
Iran seeks to lift the ban order before it comes into force, the source said.
On Feb. 12, European Union governments agreed to put NITC, Iran's biggest tanker firm, back on the list of sanctioned firms.
The EU's second-highest court ruled last July there were no grounds to blacklist the NITC after it contested the designation, but the EU moved to re-impose sanctions on tighter legal grounds.
NITC - a major transporter of Iran's oil - contested the EU's original blacklisting last year, arguing that the firm is privately owned by Iranian pension funds. It has denied any links with the Iranian government or with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
The source said that lifting the ban is important for Iran only politically while the company would not be able to work in normal conditions even if ban is removed while the general sanctions against Iran remains in place.
While some Iranian conservatives say that the ban is contradicting the Geneva nuclear deal, foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the EU's move was not against the Geneva agreement, however it was against rationality.
"Their decision was against rationality. The West has not yet understood that the sanctions will be costly for them," he said.
Iran and the P5+1 (the US, the UK, Russia, China, France and Germany) group have extend their negotiations to reach a comprehensive nuclear deal, with the aim of reaching a high-level political agreement by 1 March, and confirming the full technical details of the agreement by July 1.
After the sides failed to meet the November 24, 2014 deadline they also extended the Geneva nuclear deal, which was signed in November 2013 to provide Iran with some sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran agreeing to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities.
The US and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies.
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