Five Iranian tankers likely carrying at least $45.5 million worth of gasoline and similar products are sailing to Venezuela. It's part of a wider deal between the two U.S.-sanctioned nations amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.
FILE - In this April 30, 2017 file photo, released by an official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, center, inaugurates the Persian Gulf Star Refinery in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Five Iranian tankers likely carrying at least $45.5 million worth of gasoline and similar products are now sailing to Venezuela as of Sunday, May 17, 2020, part of a wider deal between the two U.S.-sanctioned nations amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.
For Iran, the tankers represent a way to bring money into its cash-starved Shiite theocracy and put its own pressure on the U.S., which under President Donald Trump has pursued maximalist campaigns against both nations. The ships all appear to have been loaded from the Persian Gulf Star Refinery near Bandar Abbas, Iran, which makes gasoline, Raja said. The ships then traveled around the Arabian Peninsula and through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea, according to data collected from the ship’s Automatic Identification System, or AIS, which acts as a tracking beacon.
As news about the tankers grew, an Iranian news agency called Nour, believed to have ties to the country’s Supreme National Security Council, published an item on its website early Saturday trying to link a U.S. military exercise in the Caribbean to the tankers. That council includes members of Iran’s civilian government, its military and its paramilitary, hard-line Revolutionary Guard.
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