Operation Economic Fury may have done more lasting damage to Iran than Operation Epic Fury. The squeeze is on, as the saying goes, and as we've noted in several stories in recent days, Iran's economy is in a doom spiral.
The mullahs and their minions aren't just throwing up their hands and giving up, though. Iran has come up with a new trick to sneak oil tankers past the U.S. Navy's blockade of Iranian ports: Spoofing their locations and codes to appear as Iraqi ships. There's just one problem: They've been found out.
Sanctioned tankers disguised as Iraqi vessels are moving hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian crude as President Donald Trump doubled down on the port blockade to squeeze Tehran’s oil lifeline, according to maritime intelligence.
Windward AI claimed Wednesday that a group of U.S.-sanctioned tankers are falsifying their location data to come off as anchored off Iraq while secretly loading Iranian oil at Iranian ports.
"Among the tankers spoofing their location in the area identified by Windward are four VLCCs (very large crude carriers): Alicia (IMO 9281695), RHN (IMO 9208215), Star Forest (9237632) and Aqua (IMO 9248473), using various flags, including fraudulent registries from Curacao and Malawi," the firm told Fox News Digital.
"For the four VLCCs, each VLCC can hold about 2 million barrels, so four of them would hold 8 million barrels worth about $800 million at $100 per barrel," Windward said.
Credit where credit is due, this isn't the dumbest move Iran could have made, and it does display a certain amount of technical savvy. But here's the thing:
Windward said more than two dozen tankers are confined west of Hormuz as of Wednesday, with the blockade cutting Iranian oil loadings and exports by more than half.
"This deceptive practice is under intensified scrutiny as the vessels are part of a larger group of more than two dozen tankers currently confined west of Hormuz," the firm said.
"The handysize tanker Paola and Long Range One tanker Adena, both signaling ‘Iraqi owner’ but linked to a sanctioned network."
West of Hormuz? A quick look at a map would indicate that these ships are still in the Persian Gulf, and now that they've been identified, the odds of them getting through the Strait of Hormuz, past the increasing scrutiny of the United States Navy, are essentially zero. So, try as they might, so far it doesn't look like Iran has succeeded in getting any of these tankers past the blockade.
Read More: Rubble and Ruin: Epic Fury Now Pushing Iran Into Economic Free-Fall
It won't be a small thing for the Navy and the Air Force to put eyeballs on every one of these tankers, but that may be the needful task. The Iranians may be able to spoof an electronic position-monitoring system, but it's a lot harder to spoof a United States Navy aviator in an F/A-18 Super Hornet deploying a Mark I eyeball. And if the ship in question isn't where it's reported to be, well, then it's a target for a boarding party.
The United States has too much committed to this thing to slack off now. The ring of steel around Iranian ports is still in place. Iran, yes, will keep trying to sneak shipping past, but that's only going to get more difficult. It is, as President Trump said recently, a case where we have all the cards — and we are holding aces over kings.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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