U.S. military forces stopped and boarded a sanctioned tanker carrying oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean overnight, the Pentagon said on Thursday, ramping up pressure on Tehran as the Trump administration seeks to resume negotiations to end the six-week war.
In the second such action this week, a naval boarding team rappelled down from helicopters and fanned out across the vessel, the M/T Majestic X, according to a Pentagon statement that included a 17-second video of the operation. The military said the boarding was part of a “global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate.”
Earlier this week, Navy SEALS boarded another ship in the Indian Ocean, the M/T Tifani, after the Pentagon said it was carrying oil from Iran.
Navy destroyers are also escorting at least two other Iranian tankers, the Dorena and Sevin, that left the Iranian port of Chabahar before a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports began on April 13, a U.S. military official said.
With the Tifani and the Majestic X now at least temporarily in American custody, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessels and their cargo. 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.
“International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors,” the Pentagon said in its statement on Thursday.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted at such boarding operations 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 at least 29 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, according to the military’s Central Command.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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