{"id":166750,"date":"2020-08-17T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=166750"},"modified":"2020-08-15T07:47:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-15T06:47:37","slug":"us-seizes-iranian-oil-from-four-tankers-en-route-to-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/us-seizes-iranian-oil-from-four-tankers-en-route-to-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"US Seizes Iranian Oil from Four Tankers En Route to Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"
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May 25, 2020 file photo, the Iranian oil tanker Fortune is anchored at the dock of El Palito refinery near Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. AP Photo\/Juan Carlos Hernandez.<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Aug 2020 – <\/em>The Trump administration has seized the cargo of four tankers it was targeting for transporting Iranian<\/a> fuel to Venezuela, U.S. officials said today, as it steps up its campaign of maximum pressure against the two heavily sanctioned allies.<\/p>\n

Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington filed a civil forfeiture complaint alleging that the sale was arranged by a businessman with ties to Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. At the time, sanctions experts thought it would be impossible to enforce the U.S. court order in international waters.<\/p>\n

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Read more: <\/strong><\/span> Iran briefly seizes oil tanker near Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that no military force was used in the seizures and that the ships weren\u2019t physically confiscated. Rather, U.S. officials threatened ship owners, insurers and captains with sanction to force them to hand over their cargo, which now becomes U.S. property, the official said.<\/p>\n

It is not clear where the vessels or their cargoes currently are.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged the four ships were transporting to Venezuela 1.1 million barrels of gasoline. But the tankers \u2014 the Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna \u2014 never arrived at the South American country and then went missing. Two of the ships later reappeared near Cape Verde, a second U.S. official said.<\/p>\n

Both officials agreed to discuss the sensitive diplomatic and judicial offensive only if granted anonymity.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s ambassador to Venezuela, Hojad Soltani, pushed back on what would appear a victory for the U.S. sanctions campaign, saying Thursday on Twitter that neither the ships nor their owners were Iranian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another lie and act of psychological warfare perpetrated by the U.S. propaganda machine,\u201d Soltani said. \u201cThe terrorist #Trump cannot compensate for his humiliation and defeat by Iran using false propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Read more: <\/strong><\/span> U.S. seeks more support from U.N. council to permanently extend Iran arms embargo <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

As commercial traders increasingly shun Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro\u2019s socialist government has been increasingly turning to Iran.<\/p>\n

In May, Maduro celebrated the arrival of five Iranian tankers delivering badly needed fuel to alleviate shortages that have led to days-long gas lines even in the capital, Caracas, which is normally spared such hardships.<\/p>\n

Despite sitting atop the world\u2019s largest crude reserves, Venezuela doesn\u2019t produce enough domestically refined gasoline and has seen its overall crude production plunge to the lowest in over seven decades amid its economic crisis and fallout from U.S. sanctions.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has been stepping up pressure on ship owners to abide by sanctions against U.S. adversaries like Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. In May, it issued an advisory urging the global maritime industry to be on the lookout for tactics to evade sanctions like dangerous ship-to-ship transfers and the turning off of mandatory tracking devices \u2014 both techniques used in recent oil deliveries to and from both Iran and Venezuela.<\/p>\n

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Go to Original – globalnews.ca<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Aug 2020 – The Trump administration has seized the cargo of four tankers it was targeting for transporting Iranian fuel to Venezuela, U.S. officials said today, as it steps up its campaign of maximum pressure against the two heavily sanctioned allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":166753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1126,1050,742,780,923,70],"class_list":["post-166750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-iran","tag-military-intervention","tag-sanctions","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}