U.S. authorities have moved to seize the cargo of four oil tankers carrying gasoline and fuel products from Iran to Venezuela, escalating a sanctions battle with two regimes Washington opposes and a contest over Iranian oil shipments that allegedly finance its nuclear program.
The action comes weeks after Iran sent five tankers and 1.5 million barrels of gasoline in a symbolic gesture of support to embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in defiance of the Trump administration.
A U.S. judge in Washington signed a seizure warrant Thursday for Venezuela-bound shipments aboard four other tankers — the Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna — whose deliveries were disrupted. Prosecutors estimated their cargo included 1.2 million barrels of gasoline worth nearly $50 million — the seizure of which would be a blow the U.S. government aimed at Iran’s use of third-party shippers to avert economic penalties.
In a civil forfeiture lawsuit and statement filed late Wednesday, U.S. officials in Washington cited a network of informants indicating the fuel was “a source of influence” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization. Prosecutors claimed the movements were arranged by Mahmoud Madanipour, an Iran-based man affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.
Madanipour purportedly acted on behalf of Mobin International Ltd., a firm associated with Guard Corps-connected bank accounts, prosecutors said. Madanipour and the firm also are associated with a United Arab Emirates trading company that the suit did not name that moved to conceal the shipments’ Iranian origin, prosecutors and Homeland Security Investigations agents said.
A text message between Madanipour and a co-conspirator noted difficulties in the voyage of the Liberian-flagged Bella and the Bering, after the United States threatened the Greek owners with possible sanctions, court filings state.
U.S. authorities said any funds seized would be directed in part to a fund for U.S. victims of state-sponsored terrorism, according to a statement by the Justice Department’s national security division, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.
Madanipour could not immediately be reached for comment, and UAE-based Mobin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations said the seizure would be “piracy.”
“Any attempt on the high seas to prevent Iran from engaging in lawful trade with any country it chooses will be an act of piracy, pure and simple,” said Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Tehran’s office in New York. “This is a direct threat to international peace and security and in contravention of international law including the U.N. Charter.”
The U.S. move against the tankers is the latest action in a two-year “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions that have decimated Iran’s economy. And it comes as the Trump administration is making a major push to get support for an extension of a United Nations arms embargo due to expire in October.
For example, the filings state the UAE company, identified only as “Company 1,” in January asked the owner of the Pandi to carry gasoline from Iran to the UAE but that Madanipour changed documents to show that Mobin International was responsible for the voyage. The UAE company then invoiced for 14.9 million& an entity that the Guard Corps has publicly said was operating on its behalf and that ran the Grace 1 last year, the filings said.
According to the court filing, an associate in 2017 also asked Madanipour — allegedly on behalf of proposed Chinese buyers — whether Iranian oil could be provided through other countries with payments made through other countries to avoid U.S. sanctions. “We can get payment in Oman, UAE, Turkey, Italy and Germany,” Madanipour replied, according to court documents.
It was unclear whether the Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna had been detained. Shipping tracking websites placed the first two Greek-owned vessels most recently in the Aegean Sea, and the other two in the Gulf of Oman.
Source : Washington Post
