Pentagon: Our soldiers boarded a sanctioned tanker

US forces boarded the sanctioned Veronica III tanker as part of operations against Iran, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. The ship transporting approximately 2 million barrels of crude oil and fuel oil left Venezuelan waters on January 3, when the US overthrew the country's leader, Nicolas Maduro.

“The ship tried to escape from the blockade imposed by (US) President Donald Trump (…). We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean and caught up with it,” the US Ministry of Defense announced on the X platform.

The operation was performed on the night from Saturday to Sunday. The video attached to the entry shows American soldiers boarding the tanker.

The Pentagon did not specify whether it had formally taken over the ship.

Information posted on the website of the US Treasury (Finance) shows that Veronica III is a ship flying the flag of Panama and subject to US sanctions against Iran.

The website TankerTrackers, which tracks the movement of tankers, reported on

The unit was one of several ships that escaped from the blockade of Venezuela announced by the US in January, the AP reported.

Venezuelan crude oil has been subject to U.S. sanctions for several years, and the authorities in Caracas sold it using a fleet of tankers flying undistinguishedly under the flags of other countries. In December, Trump announced a “quarantine” of such ships in the Caribbean Sea to put pressure on Maduro's government. On January 3, American commandos captured Maduro in Caracas and took him to the United States, where he stood trial, accused of, among other things, for a “narco-terrorist conspiracy”. (PAP)

akl/ap/