response to a US bribery offer to the captain of Iranian oil tanker, Adrian Darya 1, then known as Grace 1, he emphasized, “having failed at piracy, the United States has resorted to blackmailing.” The supertanker and its cargo were on July 4 unlawfully seized by Britain’s naval forces, in the Strait of Gibraltar on the pretext that it had been suspected of carrying crude to Syria in violation of the European Union’s unilateral sanctions against the Arab country. Tehran,