U.S. military forces boarded the sanctioned tanker Veronica III in the Indian Ocean after tracking it across multiple regions, the Pentagon said Sunday, Feb. 15. The Defense Department said the operation targeted illicit oil shipments connected to Venezuela’s sanctions-related shipping network and showed U.S. troops boarding the vessel.
The Pentagon said the boarding followed a broader effort to interdict tankers believed to be tied to Venezuela’s “shadow fleet” — ships it said are falsely flagged to move crude into global supply chains. It said the effort began with tracking the vessel after it left the Caribbean Sea and that U.S. forces closed the distance and “shut it down,” according to the Pentagon’s statement.
The Pentagon linked the incident to the quarantine that President Donald Trump ordered in December for sanctioned tankers, describing the move as part of pressure on then-President Nicolás Maduro. The Defense Department said the Veronica III tried to avoid that quarantine by attempting to slip away.
The ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight came after several tankers fled Venezuela’s coast in the wake of an earlier American operation in which Maduro was apprehended in January. The Pentagon did not state whether Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and it later told The Associated Press in an email it had no additional information beyond its post.
The Defense Department said the operation involved a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding,” adding that the boarding occurred after U.S. forces tracked the vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. It posted video of U.S. troops boarding the tanker.
The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Panama’s Maritime Authority said Sunday that the ship was no longer registered in Panama and that its registration had been canceled in December 2024.
TankerTrackers.com reported that the Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro’s capture, carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil. The site said the ship has been involved since 2023 with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil, and its reporting was echoed by TankerTrackers.com’s co-founder Samir Madani, who told AP in January that the organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document at least 16 tankers leaving the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine.
The Trump administration has seized tankers as part of what the Pentagon has described as efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil. Last week, the U.S. military boarded another tanker in the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II, and a defense official told AP that the ship was being held while its ultimate fate was decided by the United States.
As the Pentagon’s statement frames it, the Veronica III episode underscores the administration’s attempt to extend sanctions enforcement beyond Venezuela’s immediate coastline, following vessels into waters including the Indian Ocean after tracking them from the Caribbean.