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By John Feng
China Editor
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An oil tanker detained by U.S. forces on Tuesday was fully laden with nearly 2 million barrels of Iranian crude bound for China, according to analysts monitoring Iran’s illicit energy trade.
The Tifani was flying the flag of Botswana when it was boarded in the Indian Ocean, but both the U.S. Defense Department and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) listed the vessel as "stateless."
Footage released by the Pentagon showed U.S. troops descending from a pair of Navy helicopters onto the deck of the crude carrier.
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It was the second Iran-linked ship to be seized by American forces since the start of the U.S. blockade against most of Iran’s seaborne trade on April 13. On Sunday, a U.S. destroyer immobilized the Iranian-flagged cargo ship the Touska by firing 5-inch artillery rounds into its engine room.
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Tehran said the incident, on top of the sweeping blockade, was a breach of the two-week ceasefire, which had been due to expire on Wednesday before it was extended last-minute by President Donald Trump.
The Tifani was last seen in satellite imagery on April 6 when it was loading oil at the eastern piers of Kharg Island, Iran’s main export terminal in the Persian Gulf.
The TankerTrackers.com monitoring group, which assesses cargo based on draft, or the depth of the ship below the waterline, said the Tifani was carrying "nearly 1.9 million barrels of Iranian crude."
Separately, the commodities analytics firm Kpler said the tanker was carrying "around 2 million barrels of crude loaded at Kharg Island."
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The crew of the Tifani claimed to be sailing for Singapore, according to automatic identification system, or AIS, signals captured by the tracking website MarineTraffic, which is owned by Kpler.
However, Charlie Brown, a former U.S. Navy officer who is a senior adviser at the nonprofit United Against Nuclear Iran, said the tanker was headed for the waters off Malaysia, east of the Singapore Strait, where vessels tied to Iran’s "shadow fleet" are known to conduct ship-to-ship transfers before delivering oil shipments to Chinese refineries.
China buys most of Iran’s crude on the cheap and sources over 10 percent of its supply from the country, making it Tehran’s most important customer. The Tifani was sanctioned last year by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for its part in the trade network.
"China will not be getting this Iranian oil," Brown said on X. "Iran will not be getting badly needed funds."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday the U.S. blockade was working to disrupt this trade.
"In a matter of days, Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in," he said. "Constraining Iran’s maritime trade directly targets the regime’s primary revenue lifelines."
Tracking Tifani's Trips to China
The IMO, a U.N. specialized agency, assigns a number to each ship, which it retains throughout its service life even as its owners change its name. The Tifani’s IMO is 9273337 and it was previously known as Anahi, Amfitriti and Bunga Kasturi.
Ship-tracking data placed the Tifani in the Bay of Bengal, about 400 miles east of Sri Lanka, at the time of the U.S. interdiction.
The Tifani changed owner and flag in June 2020 and since then has exported about 34 million barrels of crude from Iran and received about 24 million barrels of transshipped oil bound for China, said TankerTrackers.com
Newsweek’s review of historical AIS data captured by the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch showed the tanker completed at least 10 visits to Chinese ports in that time and loitered off the Singapore Strait on nearly 20 separate occasions.
"As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran—anywhere they operate," the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
"International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels," it added.
China has yet to comment on the Tifani’s capture but on the previous day denied any connection to the Touska, which had called at a Chinese port in late March.
Will US Seizures Stop Iran's Fleet?
The long-term implication on Iran’s oil network, which comprises hundreds of vessels, wasn’t immediately clear. The potential seizure of a dozen such shipments might not deter the hard-liners in Tehran.
“The real question is what these interdictions do to the rest of the shadow fleet,” said Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight maritime transparency project at Stanford University. “It will certainly change the risk calculus. The question will be how much.”
On Tuesday, one ship monitoring firm, Vortexa, reported that 34 Iranian ships had made it out of the strait, despite the U.S. naval blockade which Trump has declared to be a triumph.
Trump said on Tuesday that he was extending the Iran war ceasefire until the "seriously fractured" Iranian government could submit "a unified proposal." But the naval blockade would remain in place.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it seized two foreign-owned ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, adding to the weekslong disruption of the key energy trade route.
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