Kanal13The U.S. military on Thursday seized another tanker associated with the smuggling of Iranian oil, ratcheting up a standoff with Iran a day after its paramilitary Revolutionary Guards took control of two vessels in the crucial Strait of Hormuz. According to Associated Press the Defense Department released video footage of U.S. forces on the deck of the oil tanker Majestic X, which was seized in the Indian Ocean. “We will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” a Pentagon statement said. Ship-tracking data showed the Majestic X in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia , roughly the same location as the oil tanker Tifani, earlier seized by American forces. It had been bound for Zhoushan, China.
There was no immediate response from Iran on the news of the seizure. The seizure comes a day after Iran attacked three cargo ships in the strait, capturing two of them, in a move that intensified its assault on shipping in the key waterway through which 20% of the world’s traded oil passes in peacetime. The Majestic X is a Guyana-flagged oil tanker. It previously had been named Phonix and had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2024 for smuggling Iranian crude oil in contravention of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
