Wen Yao

The tanker Wen Yao, sailing under the alias Lan Jing, was boarded by US Marines in the Gulf of Oman on 16 July 2026 in a verification boarding under the naval blockade CENTCOM reimposed on Iranian ports two days earlier.

The vessel is Curacao-registered and appears on the US sanctions list under its original name, Wen Yao; renaming ships is a common evasion tactic used to slip past sanctions screening and flag checks. The boarding was part of CENTCOM's first public enforcement tally of the reimposed blockade: four vessels redirected, one disabled and one boarded in the first three days.

The boarding illustrates the harder posture Washington adopted from 16 July, moving from turning ships away to putting armed Marines on foreign decks to inspect sanctioned cargo directly, a step Iran and several shipping bodies argue breaches transit-passage rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.