A U.S. special operations team boarded a ship in the Indian Ocean last month and seized cargo headed to Iran from China, a U.S. official said, a rare operation at sea aimed at blocking Tehran from rebuilding its military arsenal.
The seizure, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, occurred amid a strategic stalemate between Iran and the United States over its nuclear weapons program.
Iran faced off against Israel and the United States in a short war this summer that killed more than 1,000 people over 12 days of intense long-range missile and air strikes. A fleet of U.S. stealth bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities during that war, an attack that U.S. officials said had “significantly degraded” Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but regional officials and analysts fear that a renewed conflict is inevitable.
The United States had been tracking the shipment as it made its way from China to Iran, the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity, and the ship was sailing several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka when U.S. special operations forces launched the operation. The commandos boarded the ship and confiscated its cargo before letting the vessel proceed.
It was unclear what exactly the ship was carrying, but the cargo, the official said, consisted of dual-use components that could be used either for civilian applications or to make conventional weapons. The boarding occurred several weeks before the recent seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
A spokesman for the United States Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in the regions, declined to comment.
Iranian factories are working around the clock to replenish stockpiles of long-range missiles and drones that can be used to strike Israel. In the war this summer, Iran had sought to overwhelm Israel’s air defense network through sheer numbers, and will likely seek to import components to build as many new weapons as possible ahead of a renewed conflict.
The United States has increasingly sought to control the delivery of dual-use goods, especially the microelectronics and software needed to manufacture guided weapons systems and remote drones. Many of these components are much harder to explicitly ban or embargo because of their plausible use in nonmilitary applications.
Over the course of the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials have sought to interrupt the supply of these goods being shipped from firms in China to Russia. But that effort had never escalated to launching military operations against commercial shipping traffic.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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