The U.S. military on Tuesday stopped and boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean carrying oil from Iran, the Pentagon said in a statement.
It was the latest effort by the Trump administration to squeeze Iran’s oil-reliant economy since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.
“We will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” said a statement from the Defense Department, which included a video that appeared to show Navy SEALS landing by helicopter on the ship, the M/T Tifani.
The Pentagon added that it would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
With the M/T Tifani now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessel and its cargo, which the official said was in the Bay of Bengal. The administration had previously seized several tankers carrying illicit oil from Venezuela following the U.S. commando raid there in January that seized Nicolás Maduro, the president at the time.
Navy destroyers also escorted at least two Iranian tankers, the Dorena and Sevin, that had left from the Iranian port of Chabahar before the blockade began on April 13., a U.S. military official said.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted at operations like the one overnight Tuesday when he said last week that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
The U.S. Navy has turned back 28 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, the military’s Central Command said on Tuesday.
On Sunday, a Navy destroyer disabled and seized the Touska, an Iranian cargo ship, after it tried to evade the blockade. It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week.
