The U.S. military has boarded an oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel for thousands of miles, saying it tried to circumvent President Donald Trump's energy blockade in the Caribbean against sanctioned ships. The Pentagon, in a post on X on February 15, said U.S. forces conducted a "right-of-visit, maritime interdiction" of the Veronica III without incident.
Video footage posted by the department appeared to show U.S. soldiers boarding a helicopter and then positioning themselves aboard the tanker. "We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down," the department said, although it did not say whether the U.S. had formally seized the vessel. The Pentagon also stated, "We defend the Homeland forward. Distance does not protect you."
The Veronica III, which travels under the Panamanian flag, is subject to U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). In December, the U.S. imposed what the Trump administration has described as an energy quarantine, deploying its naval fleet to cut off Venezuela's oil exports and seizing sanctioned oil vessels. The blockade has continued even after a January 3 military strike to remove Nicolas Maduro from power.
The interdiction follows a cat-and-mouse chase along the same body of water. From a supply chain perspective, this incident structurally alters the operational risk profile of shadow fleet tankers, demonstrating that vessels operating outside P&I Club coverage are exposed to a renewed U.S. "unlimited range" tracking strategy. BIMCO and INTERTANKO have issued warnings to members urging them to update OFAC compliance checklists. Major commodity traders such as Vitol, Trafigura and Glencore must now manage sanctioned cargo exposure with zero tolerance.
