U.S. Boards Second Sanctioned Oil Tanker in Indian Ocean

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Washington: U.S. military forces have intercepted and boarded a second oil tanker in the Indian Ocean that had been flagged under sanctions, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. The action followed a long-distance tracking operation after the vessel set out from the Caribbean Sea earlier this year, officials said.

The tanker, identified as the Veronica III, was approached and boarded overnight in the Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the ship attempted to evade a U.S. quarantine on sanctioned tankers by sailing from Caribbean waters toward Asian routes, but was pursued and intercepted without incident.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, Pentagon officials described the operation as a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding,” underscoring that Washington will enforce sanctions globally. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean…closed the distance, and shut it down,” U.S. authorities said.

The Veronica III is registered under a Panamanian flag and appears on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list for alleged involvement in transporting Iranian-related energy products. Shipping trackers reported the vessel departed Venezuela in early January carrying close to 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, and has been tied to sanctioned Russian and Venezuelan cargo movements since 2023.

This boarding comes a week after U.S. forces also detained the Aquila II in the Indian Ocean following a similar pursuit from the Caribbean, part of a broader push to enforce a naval quarantine initiated late last year by the U.S. administration. Those prior interdictions form part of an ongoing campaign to disrupt so-called “shadow fleet” tankers moving crude that Washington deems sanction-evading.

U.S. officials have not yet clarified whether the Veronica III will be formally seized or how its crew will be processed. The operations reflect an expanded maritime enforcement strategy that stretches far beyond U.S. coastal waters as authorities aim to curtail unauthorized oil flows linked to sanctioned nations.

Photo credit: X/ DeptofWar