An OFAC-sanctioned Guyana-flagged VLCC, a Very Large Crude Carrier, loaded an assessed 1.87 million barrels of Iranian crude at Kharg Island between 23 June and 4 July while broadcasting a fabricated position, according to Windward maritime intelligence1. Kharg Island is Iran's main crude export terminal, and a VLCC carries about two million barrels, so this is close to a full cargo moved under sanctions. Rather than transmit a static false location, the 333-metre tanker faked an anchorage track that swung asymmetrically around a fixed point some 57 nautical miles to the west, mimicking the natural yaw of a ship riding its anchor chain.
The spoof exploits the rule enforcers use to flag suspect ships. An AIS, the Automatic Identification System transponder every vessel broadcasts, that sits perfectly motionless reads as suspicious; a slowly swinging track reads instead as a hull turning on its anchor in the current, so the automated filter clears it. Windward says it had not seen the pattern before this loading, and the fake was caught only when electro-optical satellite imagery contradicted the broadcast. Detecting evasion at Kharg now needs a photograph, no longer a signal alone.
The economic war runs underneath the kinetic one. Crude keeps loading even as OFAC winds down the waiver that let buyers pay for it, the same authorisation under which Iran had opened crude talks with Japan a week earlier. As the legal route to Iranian oil narrows, the covert one is adding techniques faster than stationary-position detection can follow.
