WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 U.S. military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Sunday. <\/p>\n
Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains<\/a>. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure then-President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> before Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation. <\/p>\n Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The Defense Department said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting \u201ca right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe vessel tried to defy President Trump\u2019s quarantine \u2014 hoping to slip away,\u201d the Pentagon said. \u201cWe tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.\u201d <\/p>\n Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. troops boarding the tanker.<\/p>\n The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control. <\/p>\n The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro\u2019s capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.<\/p>\n \u201cSince 2023, she\u2019s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,\u201d the organization said.<\/p>\n Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine. <\/p>\n The Trump administration has been seizing tankers<\/a> as part of its broader efforts to take control<\/a> of the Venezuela\u2019s oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and later told the AP in an email that it had no additional information to provide beyond that post.<\/p>\n