Iran shipping line confronts sanction in court

TEHRAN: Iran's state shipping line will challenge the latest round of sanctions at the European Union's highest court, saying there is no evidence showing that it has been involved in arms trafficking as EU and US officials say.

In written answers to questions from Reuters received on Sunday, the managing director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines also said the IRISL planned to counter financial sanctions that have hampered its access to insurance by the creation of an Iranian P&I (protection and indemnity) fund.

Last month the EU targeted over 30 IRISL holding companies as part of a wider sanctions campaign led by Western states aimed mostly at forcing Tehran to curb its nuclear energy drive, which they suspect is meant to develop atomic bombs.

Iran denies this, saying it wants nuclear energy only for electricity or medical treatments.

Sanctions have caused several IRISL vessels to be temporarily seized in foreign ports. The latest clampdown, on its affiliates overseas, pushed a major British shipping agency that used to represent IRISL, Johnson Stevens Agencies Ltd, into administration.

"Since the cancellation of P&I insurance coverage on the company's vessels by European and British insurers with the intention of grounding the company's fleet nationally and internationally failed, the European Union, in an unjust move, put on its sanctions list some of the companies that had commercial cooperation with the IRISL," Mohammad Hossein Dajmar, IRISL's managing director, told Reuters in his written response.

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