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US seizes ‘largest-ever’ Iranian fuel shipment headed to Venezuela, 1.1 million barrels of petroleum

Aug 16, 2020 2:00 pm By Christine Douglass-Williams

In recent months, Iran has been strengthening its alliance with Venezuela. The Iranian regime’s proxy Hizballah has also been expanding its activities there. The Iran-Venezuela relationship is nothing new:

In 2010-2011, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, sent fuel to Iran, which was targeted by sanctions aimed at stifling its nuclear weapons program.

In March, the U.S. indicted Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro on narco-terrorism charges, and in a “rare action,” America also offered “up to $15m reward for information leading to the arrest of Nicolas Maduro.” The U.S. and its Latin American partners have also been discussing the presence of Hizballah in Venezuela. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in January: “We’re concerned that Maduro has extended safe harbor to a number of terrorist groups.”

In May, Iran sent petrol tankers to gas-starved Venezuela, while Iran’s President Rouhani threatened the U.S. if it interfered. Maduro celebrated his country’s alliance with Iran and declared: “The end of Ramadan brings us the arrival of the FORTUNE ship, a sign of the solidarity of the Islamic people of Iran with Venezuela.” In the last week of June, Iran shipped food to Venezuela, where the first Iranian supermarket is set to open.

“U.S. seizes multimillion-dollar Iranian fuel shipment bound for Venezuela, largest ever of its kind, DOJ says,” by Amanda Macias, CNBC, August 14, 2020:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Friday that federal agents seized a multimillion-dollar Iranian fuel shipment bound for Venezuela, in what it described as the largest-ever seizure of its kind.

The U.S., with the assistance of foreign partners, confiscated a total of 1.1 million barrels of petroleum from four foreign-flagged oil tankers, as Tehran and Caracas attempt to sidestep U.S. sanctions.

According to the Justice Department, after the seizure, “Iran’s navy forcibly boarded an unrelated ship in an apparent attempt to recover the seized petroleum but was unsuccessful.”

Footage released by Central Command, the U.S. military’s combatant command that oversees the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, shows the failed Iranian operation.

“We are seeing more and more global shipping fleets avoiding the Iran-Venezuela trade due to our sanctions implementation and enforcement efforts,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus wrote in a statement. “The United States remains committed to our maximum pressure campaigns against the Iranian and Maduro regimes,” she added.

In June, five Iranian oil tankers brought approximately 1.5 million barrels to gas-starved Venezuela, which was once a prominent fuel exporter. Gasoline is scarce in the South American nation due to a near-complete breakdown of the OPEC nation’s 1.3 million barrel-per-day refining network.

The two OPEC nations have previously helped each other in the face of U.S. sanctions. In 2010-2011, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, sent fuel to Iran, which was targeted by sanctions aimed at stifling its nuclear weapons program.

Venezuela — once the crown jewel of Latin America’s developing economy — has hit dire straits in recent years.

Oil, the country’s biggest export, has plummeted more than 60% since Maduro succeeded dictator Hugo Chavez as Venezuela’s president in 2013. Earlier this year, U.S. crude prices briefly traded in negative territory for the first time ever as the coronavirus dented the global economic growth outlook…..

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Filed Under: Featured, Iran, Venezuela Tagged With: Justice Department


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Comments

  1. Wellington says

    Aug 16, 2020 at 3:19 pm

    Good—respecting the seizure.

    And most “delicious” here is that Maduro is nothing more than a temporary dhimmi ally of a Mohammedan nation, in this case Iran. Maduro is not only a tyrant, he is also a fool (N.B., some tyrants, for instance Franco, have not also been fools).

    On a far, far more limited scale, the Iranian-Venezuelan alliance is reminiscent of the Nazi-Soviet pact in late August of 1939. It’s another example of the scum of the earth temporarily aligning with yet another scourge of mankind. And nothing good can come from this. Think the year 1939 if you are at all in doubt because when evil aligns with evil it is invariably a downer for mankind as a whole.

    As here.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 16, 2020 at 7:58 pm

      Good analysis, Wellington.

      • James Lincoln says

        Aug 16, 2020 at 8:34 pm

        +1

      • Sam says

        Aug 17, 2020 at 8:01 pm

        Analyses?hahaha … his comment is as foolish as you … venxuella is one of few countries on this planet that want to exit the jewish slavery that is ruling the world, one of its ways is the us dollar use as the international currency … so, there few countries that want to use barter, gold or their own money, and they are beung punished by the jewish power ruling the world and enslaving it …. go read and enlarge your tiny brain.

        • Wellington says

          Aug 17, 2020 at 10:46 pm

          I take it, Sam, you have a special leather-bound edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 17, 2020 at 11:58 pm

          Spot on, Wellington.

    • Charles Ford says

      Aug 17, 2020 at 8:54 pm

      Where does the Us have the right to seize anything on the high seas? These are two sovereign nations and we are not at war with either. Congress must do this. We fought a second round with UK Imperialism over seizure of our ships and sailors. We were right and just then Not so now

      • Wellington says

        Aug 17, 2020 at 11:04 pm

        Charles Ford: We’re at war with both Iran and Venezuela de facto, though not de jure (N.B., the vast majority of conflicts America has been in have been undeclared war situations, demonstrating just how flexible the Constitution can be at times). Both nations are run by thugs and each has an abominable record on human rights. Each nation also is steeped in drug running and aiding terrorism.

        Moreover, your comparison to the situation which led to the War of 1812 involved two decent polities with significant grievances. Nothing decent about the current regimes in Iran and Venezuela. Besides, sometimes might makes right as long as the might lies with the good guys.

        As for Congress, aside from the fact that it is largely pathetic, especially the House run by that wretched excuse for a Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the technicality of declaring war by Congress would be overkill. Relax and rethink matters. Do you really care if the US President teaches some bad guys a lesson? Well, maybe you do but I don’t. I’m sure Teddy Roosevelt would approve, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson too. Good company here you know.

  2. DearDiary says

    Aug 16, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    Venezuela has the most untapped petroleum in the World. And, thanks to Karl Marx and corruption, it remains untapped. And both countries, Iran and Venezuela, now have to import their main export. How many strikes does it take before the slow learners stop thinking communism or sharia could ever work?

    • Zé Manel Tonto says

      Aug 17, 2020 at 7:30 am

      “That was not real communism.”
      It is always the argument.
      It was not real communism in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Eastern Germany.
      It cannot be that it does not work.

      • Wellington says

        Aug 17, 2020 at 11:12 pm

        So true. So far Communism is something like 0-47 but still there are rubes out there who think it’s because Marxist theory has never really been tried. Well, Marxist theory stinks, whether it be determinism, dialectical materialism, the theory of alienation, the class struggle theory—with these last two being a prescription for genocide.

        Fools abound and the worst fools are the well educated fools. As JFK observed, he had rarely met an intellectual with both feet on the ground.

  3. gravenimage says

    Aug 16, 2020 at 8:01 pm

    US seizes ‘largest-ever’ Iranian fuel shipment headed to Venezuela, 1.1 million barrels of petroleum
    …………….

    Why is Iran shipping petroleum to Venezuela, when it is the biggest petroleum producer in this hemisphere? Even with Communism retarding their production, this should be unnecessary. I wonder if this oil tanker is actually shipping oil?

    • Juhani says

      Aug 18, 2020 at 2:15 am

      Yeah, seems Venezuela doesn’t have enough own oil producing capacity. If they had just evading the sanctions, they could just pump the oil into another ship(s) at the international waters.

  4. JDow says

    Aug 17, 2020 at 5:11 am

    We just GOTTA use that fuel in our fight against ISIS and other militant Muhammadans. It’d be poetic justice, which is probably why the geezer hated poets.

    {^_^}

  5. unbeliever1 says

    Aug 17, 2020 at 3:35 pm

    It irks me to know that under a Democratic administration, Iran will be a big winner.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 19, 2020 at 12:17 am

      Grimly true, I’m afraid.

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