United States forces reportedly boarded a cargo ship travelling from China to Iran in November, marking the latest example of increasingly aggressive maritime operations under the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Unnamed officials told the newspaper that U.S. military personnel intercepted the vessel several hundred miles from Sri Lanka. The operation involved special forces and seized material described as “potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons,” though officials noted the items were dual-use, with both civilian and military applications. The ship was later allowed to continue its voyage, News.Az reports, citing Al Jazeera.
This is the first reported U.S. interdiction of a shipment from China to Iran in several years and occurred just weeks before American forces seized an oil tanker off Venezuela for alleged sanctions violations.
Iran remains under heavy U.S. sanctions, and neither Tehran nor Beijing immediately commented on the November raid. China, a key trading partner of Iran, has regularly denounced U.S. sanctions as illegal. Earlier on Friday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson condemned the recent seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker brought to a Texas port, saying Beijing “opposes unilateral illicit sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorisation of the UN Security Council.”
The interception is part of a broader pattern of U.S. maritime pressure targeting shipments linked to countries under sanctions, including Iran and Venezuela, as Washington seeks to limit their access to goods and materials potentially linked to military programs.