Newly unsealed court papers publicly confirm the US government has seized nearly one million barrels of Iranian crude oil from the M/T Suez Rajan tanker. The seizure is at the center of a shadowy conflict playing out in the world’s ocean shipping corridors as the US seeks to use economic sanctions to block Iran from exporting oil.
The US and its allies have been seizing Iranian oil cargoes since withdrawing from the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA and reimposing sanctions on Iran in 2018.
This has caused the Iranian military to retaliate by seizing ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.
The US claims the Suez Rajan was transporting oil to China in violation of US sanctions.
According to the court filings, in early February 2022, an empty Suez Rajan anchored near Singapore and took on a small amount of legal oil, about 4,000 barrels, in a transfer with another vessel, the CS Brilliance.
But about a week later, it took on nearly a million barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil from another vessel, the Virgo. The Virgo reported a false location about eight miles away to hide the transfer, though satellite imagery showed the vessels next to one another. Paperwork was falsified to indicate that all the oil had come from the Brilliance.
US authorities threatened to prosecute Empire Navigation, the Greek operator of the tanker, for transporting the sanctioned oil. Empire agreed to cooperate and instructed the vessel to sail from the coast of Singapore to US waters off the coast of Texas this spring.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened that anyone involved in attempting to offload the Suez Rajan’s cargo “should expect to be struck back.”
The US Navy responded to these threats by increasing its presence in West Asia. The Navy sent the USS Bataan battleship through the Strait of Hormuz and announced it was considering putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the strait to stop Iran from seizing ships.
After sitting off the Texas coast for months, the Suez Rajan began the hours-long ship-to-ship transfer of its oil to another tanker, the MR Euphrates, on 21 August.
The newly released court documents confirm the US government then seized the oil.
Empire Navigation pleaded guilty to smuggling sanctioned Iranian crude oil and agreed to pay a $2.4 million fine, the newly unsealed US court documents show.
The seizure comes as the US and Iran have engaged in indirect talks in Oman regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Last month, the US and Iran agreed to a deal involving a prisoner exchange and the release of $6 billion in Iranian funds from oil sales seized in banks in South Korea.
As the Suez Rajan was being offloaded, Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, portrayed recent US actions as contradictory, given the ongoing negotiations.
On the one hand, he said the US government was expressing interest in direct talks to pave the way for a renewed nuclear deal and, on the other, imposing new sanctions and seizing oil.
According to United Against Nuclear Iran, a nonprofit organization that includes many former US and foreign government security officials, the Suez Rajan was just one of at least 300 tankers evading US sanctions to transport Iranian crude.
Iranian oil exports reached their highest level this year since the US reimposed sanctions in 2018.
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