{"id":103703,"date":"2020-08-14T13:17:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T17:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=103703"},"modified":"2020-08-14T13:17:12","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T17:17:12","slug":"u-s-seizes-iranian-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103703","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Seizes Iranian Fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIn this May 25, 2020 file photo, the Iranian oil tanker Fortune is anchored at the dock of the El Palito refinery near Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/em><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has for the first time confiscated cargo in vessels allegedly loaded with Iran fuel in violation of sanctions, U.S. officials said, as it steps up its campaign of maximum pressure against Tehran and Caracas.<\/p>\n

U.S. federal prosecutors filed suit to seize the four tankers of fuel that Iran was sending to Venezuela. This is the latest move in the administration\u2019s effort to stifle the economies of its two top foes.<\/p>\n

U.S. seizes Iranian gas from 4 tankers headed to Venezuela<\/h3>\n

MIAMI \u2014 The Trump administration has seized the cargo of four tankers it was targeting for transporting Iranian fuel to Venezuela, U.S. officials said Thursday, as it steps up its campaign of maximum pressure against the two heavily sanctioned allies.<\/p>\n

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Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington filed a civil forfeiture\u00a0complaint\u00a0<\/a>alleging that the sale was arranged by a businessman, Mahmoud Madanipour, with ties to Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. At the time, sanctions experts thought it would be impossible to enforce the U.S. court order in international waters.<\/p>\n

A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that no military force was used in the seizures and that the ships weren\u2019t physically confiscated. Rather, U.S. officials threatened ship owners, insurers and captains with sanction to force them to hand over their cargo, which now becomes U.S. property, the official said.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged the four ships were transporting to Venezuela 1.1 million barrels of gasoline. But the tankers never arrived at the South American country and then went missing. Two of the ships later reappeared near Cape Verde, a second U.S. official said.<\/p>\n

Both officials agreed to discuss the sensitive diplomatic and judicial offensive only if granted anonymity.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s ambassador to Venezuela, Hojad Soltani, pushed back on what would appear a victory for the U.S. sanctions campaign, saying Thursday on Twitter that neither the ships nor their owners were Iranian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If his auntie had balls she’d be his uncle, too. Read the rest here: Market Watch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this May 25, 2020 file photo, the Iranian oil tanker Fortune is anchored at the … U.S. Seizes Iranian Fuel<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103706,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103703\/revisions\/103706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}