US Military Covert Operation: Bypassing Sanctions via Ship-to-Ship Transfers
The US military has been running this whole covert operation since early May. It’s about moving Gulf oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, using those secretive ship-to-ship transfers. They're basically borrowing a trick from Iran’s playbook on bypassing sanctions. Reuters got wind of it Monday.
It’s happening near the exit of the strait, off the coasts of the UAE and Oman. At least ninety-two ships are involved. And they claim they’ve moved roughly ninety million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products since things kicked off. That's based on satellite images and shipping data that Reuters dug up.
The setup is deliberately hidden. Not a single thing obvious. Tankers just sail to a meeting spot before the strait. Then they stagger their departures three thousand to four thousand meters apart. They kill their transponders, dim the lights. Total blackout.
Then they go to one of two transfer sites. One off Fujairah in the UAE, the other near Sohar in Oman’s port. There, they pull alongside bigger carriers Very Large Crude Carriers and start pumping the cargo across.
Each actual transfer takes a long time. Twenty-four to forty hours. After that? The empty tankers just head back through the strait. While the loaded ships keep moving on. It's a slow dance of evasion.
Eight sources told Reuters, including some private security guys who were actually involved in those transfers, that this is all run by the US military. Anyone wanting access has to submit everything: tracking history, ownership stuff, cargo documentation. All to the US Navy’s Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping office in Bahrain. You don't get a transit window until they clear some compliance review.
Something else happened with an Apache helicopter on June 9th. Iran shot it down. That triggered retaliatory bombings from the US. And that same mission? That was tied into it somehow, according to four sources, including someone who knows about that attack.
Both the crew and the chopper got rescued by a drone boat. Reuters counted six pairs of tankers clustered off Sohar that day the Apache went down. A defense official said no Central Command forces were actually running any offshore oil transfers. They couldn't confirm anything about the gunship’s role, though.
This ship-to-ship trick isn't new. Iran has been doing this for years to sneak oil past sanctions. Usually, they run just one pair of ships at a time, trying not to get caught. Especially since their prewar export volumes weren't huge.
But the US operation? It runs scores of pairs simultaneously. As recently as June 11th, satellite photos showed seventeen pairs doing transfers at both those sites at once. Crazy density.
Michael Froman, president of that Council on Foreign Relations group, made a pointed observation Friday. He noted the irony: “the United States has adopted the same dark fleet techniques that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran pioneered to evade American and UN sanctions."
The operation is dangerous though. Real dangers. Ships are moving at night. Transponders off, lights dimmed. They’re going too fast, there's no room to move around safely. Collision risk is high, shipping officials warned.
Iranian drones and missiles? That threat is still hanging over everything. Noam Raydan, a senior fellow who specializes in maritime risk at the Washington Institute, said something chilling: “You just don’t know when Iran might decide to start using drones or even gunboats in order to prevent even those ships from transiting the strait."
The UAE state oil company ADNOC was among the most active players, according to six sources. The Kuwait Oil Tanker Company got involved too. For instance, on June 6th, around two-and-a-half million barrels of crude moved off one of their vessels near Sohar. And that receiving ship immediately headed for China.
The sheer volume they’re moving is big. But it still falls short of the pre-blockade average. Twenty million barrels a day used to pass through there, remember? Trump said this week the strait would reopen Friday under some framework peace deal with Iran. But details are totally vague. Reuters couldn't tell if that deal actually changed anything about these transfers happening now.
Raydan just sighed. “I don’t see a permanent solution in all of this,” he said. “This is just a temporary fix amid exceptional times.”
Written by Gree News Team — Senior Editorial Board
Gree News Team covers international news and global affairs at Gree News. Our collective of senior editors is dedicated to providing independent, accurate, and responsible journalism for a global audience.
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