Maritime intelligence experts are starting to see a new pattern of “shadow” activity in waters in and around the Strait of Hormuz since the United States naval blockade on vessels coming in and out of Iranian ports went into effect on Monday, suggesting that more ships seem to be adopting tactics to avoid detection than during the previous weeks of war.
“Now, we are starting to see vessels going dark or using ‘zombie’ or random identification,” said Ami Daniel, the chief executive of Windward, a maritime intelligence data provider, in an interview on Tuesday.
In the weeks after the American-Israeli attack on Iran in late February, Iranian exports went “uninterrupted” and had “almost no need to go off radar,” Mr. Daniel said. But in the past 24 hours, more ships appear to be manipulating the global system intended to keep tabs on vessel activity and traffic, suggesting that some vessels linked to Iran are being “a bit more cautious,” he said.
Under international maritime law, most large commercial vessels must travel with a transponder that automatically transmits the ship’s name, location, route and other identifying information. That includes a 9-digit number with a country code, which serves as a digital fingerprint for a ship.
Vessels in Middle Eastern waters that are now trying to hide their location or are otherwise falsifying information are employing methods that have been perfected by Russian “shadow fleet” vessels evading sanctions related to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some experts say.
“Shadow fleet tankers have been experimenting with stateless ID numbers,” said John C.K. Daly, a nonresident fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington who has been tracking Russian shadow ships. “What the Russians have been doing is altering the numbers.”
When a ship is engaged in “spoofing,” as the practice is known, its captain can type in a false origin or destination or can pretend to be piloting another ship altogether. Vessels can also temporarily turn off their transponders, seeming to disappear in one place and reappear in another, sometimes with altered data.
This approach has enabled Russia to keep up its energy exports and finance its war, generating up to $100 billion a year.
It appears that vessels linked to Iran are using similar methods now, experts say. Some ships have gone dark, while sanctioned and falsely flagged vessels seem to still be active, a Windward report on Tuesday noted.
“Under previous enforcement frameworks, including the December blockade of Venezuela, sanctioned and stateless tankers were primary targets for interdiction,” the report said. “The continued movement of similar vessel profiles indicates that operators are testing the practical limits of enforcement in real time.”
By manipulating the global system meant to illuminate ship movements, so-called ghost or shadow vessels may compound confusion about the state of the Strait of Hormuz, even if in the end they cannot breach the American blockade.
“Right now, the strait is a contested information environment,” said Erik Bethel, a partner at Mare Liberum, a maritime technology venture capital fund.
Detection-avoidance tricksmay make it harder for the Navy to identify boats for interdiction. “A blockade is only as strong as the intelligence behind the interdictions,” Mr. Bethel said.
The maritime system is complex. A vessel may be owned by one country, leased to another and travel under a third country’s flag of convenience, Mr. Bethel said. That makes determining who is truly behind any given journey a “really hard thing to do.”
Maritime intelligence companies and militaries use an array of sources to stitch together information about vessels, including optical satellites, radar satellites and radio frequencies. They also collect information being transmitted by sailors, sometimes unwittingly, through their own personal technology, like Fitbits and cellphones.
Still, whatever ruses they employ, vessels off Iran might only get so far. It is difficult to get out to the open ocean via a waterway as narrow as the Strait of Hormuz without being detected.
A U.S. official said that more than 12 American military vessels were stationed in international waters in the Gulf of Oman. And on Tuesday, United States Central Command said that six merchant vessels had complied with directions by radio from U.S. forces to turn around and re-enter Iranian ports.
“My expectation is that the U.S. Navy can sit out in the Gulf of Oman,” Mr. Daniel of Windward said. “I don’t think there’s a way to breach the blockade.”
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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