A luxury superyacht linked to a Russian oligarch passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, data showed on Tuesday, despite the parallel blockades maintained there by the United States and Iran.
The 464-foot vessel, the Nord, appears to be tied to Aleksei A. Mordashov, a steel mogul who is subject to American and European sanctions. The vessel left Port Rashid in Dubai, where it had been docked for weeks, on Friday and sailed through the strait on Saturday, according to data from the tracking service VesselFinder.com and Kpler, a firm that tracks marine traffic.
Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior maritime intelligence analyst at the data provider Windward, said it appeared likely that Iran had let the yacht through. Data showed that it had sailed close to Larak, an Iranian island, using a route that Iran has established for vessels that it is allowing to pass. The Nord’s transponder, which allows the vessel to be tracked by shipping monitors, was turned on, she said.
“The I.R.G.C. has stated all vessels transiting need permission — Nord would have been the same as others,” Ms. Wiese Bockmann said, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Since the Nord left from Dubai, she said, it might not have been subject to the American blockade, which targets vessels going to and from Iranian ports.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and much of its natural gas normally passes, has been severely restricted since the recent war with Iran began at the end of February. Iran now says that ships can pass only with the Revolutionary Guards’ permission, and the United States has imposed its own blockade in response to Iran’s. Most shipowners and insurers do not consider the strait safe enough to traverse, Ms. Wiese Bockmann said.
Russia is one of Iran’s key allies. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in Moscow on Monday to discuss Iran’s war with the United States and Israel.
Mr. Mordashov, 60, is the chairman and main stakeholder of Severstal, one of Russia’s biggest steel makers. Shipping records show that the Nord is registered to Yurkon, a Russian firm that Mr. Mordashov’s wife, Marina A. Mordashova, owned for a brief period in 2022.
Yurkon is registered in Cherepovets, a town north of Moscow that is home to Severstal’s main plant, according to the Russian corporate registry. The chief executive of Yurkon, which lists “rental and leasing of water transport equipment” as its main activity, is an individual linked to Severstal.
Mr. Mordashov, who also has interests in retail and gold mining, is one of the Russian moguls who acquired their initial wealth during the chaotic period of post-Soviet privatization in the 1990s. Last week, the Russian edition of Forbes ranked him as the country’s wealthiest man, with $37 billion in assets.
Like most Russian oligarchs, Mr. Mordashov is loyal to Mr. Putin, and he and his wife are under sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When the Nord anchored in waters off Hong Kong in 2022, the authorities there said they would not seize it, prompting the U.S. State Department to raise concerns about the “possible use of Hong Kong as a safe haven by individuals evading sanctions.”
The Nord has six decks, a 25-meter swimming pool, two helipads and a hangar that converts into a squash court, according to a yachting catalog. It was anchored off Oman on Monday, according to data; its final destination is Port Victoria in the Seychelles, the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, according to VesselFinder.com.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
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