The United States has intensified a maritime blockade designed to choke off Iran’s oil revenues, a move that could strip Tehran of roughly $435 million a day – about $13 billion a month – by halting both imports and exports.
According to shipping data analysed by the advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), Iran’s so‑called “ghost fleet” moved 60 million barrels of crude – valued at an estimated $5 billion – between the launch of Operation Epic Fury and the commencement of the US blockade of the Persian Gulf. The bulk of that oil was destined for China, underscoring the close economic ties between the two nations.
UANI estimates that wartime oil exports have generated more than $5 billion in revenue for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Those funds underwrite Iran’s active missile and drone programmes, which are central to the ongoing conflict.
Ships under pressure
At least 34 Iranian vessels are currently anchored or loitering in Southeast Asian waters, awaiting orders to return to Iran and face the blockade. One of these, the tanker Sobar, left Malaysian waters on 19 April and is headed toward the Islamic Republic. Another, the Felicity, departed the Gulf of Kutch – the sea between India and Pakistan – on 18 April, subsequently switched off its location beacon, and satellite imagery later showed it steering back toward the Persian Gulf.
Retired CIA senior operations officer Rick de la Torre told the Washington Free Beacon that the US military is serious about interdiction. He warned, "Whatever left the barn before the barn doors are closed, is gone already, right?" He added that oil shipments often double as a conduit for military components, linking crude revenue directly to weapons technology transfers.
US interdiction actions
The Pentagon announced early on Tuesday that it had intercepted the sanctioned tanker Tifani in the Indian Ocean. The vessel was carrying 1.8 million barrels of Iranian crude and was on course to conduct a ship‑to‑ship transfer with another tanker bound for China.
On Wednesday evening, a second interdiction saw the tanker Majestic X stopped in the same ocean, demonstrating US willingness to confront Iran’s fleet beyond the Persian Gulf.
Over the preceding weekend, US forces seized the Iran‑flagged container ship Touska. The vessel, sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020, made routine calls at a Chinese port linked to Tehran’s missile supply chain and appears to have attempted to breach the blockade, possibly carrying arms. Charlie Brown, a senior adviser at UANI, described the movements as "not routine commercial activity" and a "deliberate attempt to move possible contraband cargo through known logistics nodes despite heightened scrutiny and interdiction risk."
The combined effect of these operations is to deprive the IRGC of the financial lifeline that oil sales provide, while also disrupting any parallel flow of weapons components that may be hidden within commercial cargoes.
The details were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.