The United States officially acknowledged on Friday that it had confiscated a tanker carrying Iranian oil in April, a development that occurred just prior to Iran’s seizure of two vessels in the Gulf region. This marks the first official statement by the Justice Department regarding the incident.
According to the department, the vessel in question was the Suez Rajan, a tanker under Greek management, carrying 980,000 barrels of crude oil. It was allegedly being sold by Iran’s influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to China. This sale was purportedly in violation of both U.S. and international sanctions, and as such, the U.S. government had obtained a warrant earlier this year for the tanker’s seizure.
Around the time of the seizure on April 19, the vessel’s owner, Suez Rajan Ltd, pleaded guilty to sanctions violations and received a $2.5 million fine. Subsequently, the Greek vessel operator, Empire Navigation, agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities and directed the ship, which was located in Southeast Asia at the time, to transport its oil cargo to the United States. However, at that time, U.S. authorities did not confirm the takeover of the cargo or the ship’s destination in the United States.
