Cracking Down on Iran’s Shadow Fleet

“Iran’s shadow fleet” refers to a clandestine network of mostly older oil tankers and associated front companies that Iran uses to secretly export oil and petroleum products despite U.S. and other sanctions. These ships typically hide their identity and cargo through tactics like switching flags, turning off or spoofing their tracking transponders, using shell companies as owners, and conducting ship‑to‑ship transfers to disguise that the oil is Iranian.

In this specific press statement, “cracking down” mainly means imposing financial and maritime sanctions on elements of Iran’s shadow fleet. On December 18, 2025, the U.S. announced that the Treasury Department was sanctioning 29 shadow‑fleet vessels and a network of associated companies, which freezes any U.S.-linked assets, cuts them off from the U.S. financial system, and threatens secondary sanctions for others that deal with them. More broadly, crackdowns on such fleets can also include tighter enforcement of sanctions, pressure on flag states and ports, and, in some cases, physical interdiction or seizure of sanctioned tankers by the U.S. or partner navies.

Most actions against Iran’s shadow fleet are led by:

• The U.S. Department of the Treasury, especially the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which designates ships, companies, and individuals for sanctions.
• The U.S. Department of State, which coordinates sanctions policy and issues related press statements and designations alongside Treasury.

For physical enforcement at sea, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard can be involved, often working with allied navies and coast guards. Recent operations against shadow‑fleet ships have involved partners such as Estonia and France (for Russian-linked tankers) and other U.S. allies that enforce sanctions in their waters or ports.

Crackdowns on a shadow fleet can affect normal shipping and trade in several ways:

• Tanker supply and freight costs: Sanctioning or blacklisting dozens or hundreds of tankers effectively removes them from legitimate trade, tightening available shipping capacity and potentially raising freight rates for other oil cargoes.
• Insurance and compliance: Major insurers and P&I clubs avoid sanctioned or high‑risk ships. As authorities target deceptive practices, legitimate shipowners, charterers, and banks face stricter due‑diligence and compliance costs, and some may refuse business that looks even slightly connected to Iran.
• Safety and environmental risks: Shadow‑fleet tankers are often old, poorly maintained, and under‑ or uninsured. Their presence increases the risk of spills and accidents that can disrupt regional ports or sea lanes and impose large clean‑up costs on coastal states rather than on the operators.
• Trade patterns: Buyers may shift to non‑Western insurers, smaller intermediaries, or alternative suppliers, changing trade routes and potentially complicating regional energy markets.

The “Exception: forbidden” error on the original State Department preview URL indicates a technical or access‑control problem on that specific page (for example, a misconfigured permission or an outdated draft link), not a policy decision described in public sources. The same press statement is publicly available via other official State Department sites, which suggests the error is a website issue limited to that particular URL.

Yes. The full text of the press statement “Cracking Down on Iran’s Shadow Fleet” is accessible through other official and archival locations, including:

• The U.S. Virtual Embassy Iran website, which hosts the complete statement by Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
• Mirror/archival sites such as GlobalSecurity.org, which reproduce the State Department press statement.

These provide the content that the malfunctioning preview URL was intended to show.

Public information does not specify a precise time when the broken preview URL will be fixed. However, because the exact text of the press release is already available on other official State Department platforms (such as the Virtual Embassy Iran site and releases pages) and on archival mirrors, the full content is effectively available now even if that one URL continues to return an error.