Iran claims it circumvents US sanctions with shipments to Venezuela

May 26, 2020

In open defiance of the US “maximum pressure” policy, a second Iranian tanker has arrived in the Venezuelan port of El Palito. The tanker Forest was second in a flotilla of five, carrying a total of 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and other petrochemical products to the Latin American nation grappling with hyperinflation. The United States had earlier announced it was considering measures to block the deal by the two nations that both suffer from severe American sanctions.

Escorted by the Venezuelan navy and air force, the first vessel, the Fortune, docked in the same port earlier this week. A third vessel is expected to reach Venezuelan shores May 27.

Apart from American sanctions aimed at zeroing out the two countries’ lifeline oil exports, the economic crises in Iran and Venezuela have been exacerbated by a recent nosedive in global oil prices largely blamed on the coronavirus pandemic.

As Venezuela’s oil minister embraced the captain of the Iran-flagged tanker, patriotic praise inundated Iranian papers and news outlets. Both hard-line and Reformist dailies asserted that the delivery had successfully circumvented US sanctions and “humiliated America.” According to the daily Javan — owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the arrival of the vessel was a show of Iranian “might under the nose of America” after it navigated though international waters, smoothly passing through the UK-controlled Strait of Gibraltar without being intercepted.

In a statement last week, the Trump administration denounced support provided by Iran — as well as other allies, namely Cuba, Russia and China — to “the illegitimate and tyrannical regime of Nicolas Maduro,” noting that the maximum pressure campaign “will continue until Maduro’s hold on Venezuela is over.”