India seizes three oil tankers linked to Iran’s shadow fleet

The Indian Coast Guard said that it seized three oil tankers in the Arabian Sea as part of what it described as a coordinated operation against an international oil-smuggling network, which the Iranian media has linked to the country’s oil trade. 

In a statement, the Indian Coast Guard said it intercepted three vessels about 100 nautical miles west of Mumbai on Friday after what it called “tech-enabled surveillance and data-pattern analysis.”

“The syndicate exploited mid-sea transfers in international waters to move cheap oil from conflict-ridden regions to motor tankers, evading duties owed to coastal states,” the coast guard said.

It added that sustained inspections, electronic data checks and crew questioning had revealed the network’s methods and links to what it described as a “global handler network.” It said the vessels were being escorted to Mumbai for further legal action.

Tracking firm TankerTrackers said it had identified the three vessels as Stellar Ruby operating under the Iranian flag, Chiltern and Asphalt Star, Iran International reported. 

All three ships had been sanctioned by the United States in 2025 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), due to accusations related to participating in the transport of sanctioned Iranian oil, according to data from Kpler, a platform specialising in tracking oil and gas trade. 

The sanctions documents say the vessels were added to the sanction list as part of measures against what Washington describes as a “shadow fleet” used to evade restrictions on Iranian oil exports.

On Saturday, Washington announced new sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s oil exports, including targeting 14 vessels flagged in countries such as Turkey, India and the United Arab Emirates, moments after the indirect talks held in Oman concluded. 

On Thursday, Iran’s army spokesperson, Brigadier-General Mohammad Akraminia, said the military was ready for war, which would “encompass the entire region and all US bases” if that is what the US wanted.

Meanwhile, the virtual US embassy in Iran issued an alert early on Friday urging American citizens to “leave Iran now”. 

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a parliamentary committee that “there is a build-up of conditions toward a critical mass that could bring about the downfall of the Iranian regime”.

Iran has warned that it is prepared for regional conflict if its conditions for the negotiation framework are rejected, the report added. 

India and the US signed a trade deal on Saturday, following which Washington lifted the punitive 25% tariff on the assurance that New Delhi would make no further purchases of Russian oil.

Indian commerce minister Piyush Goyal said that buying crude oil or LNG, LPG from the US  is in India’s own strategic interests “as we diversify our oil sources”. 

White House has instituted an executive action to “monitor” India’s oil imports, in a move that analysts have publicly called “economic coercion”. 

On Friday, Trump also signed an executive order to impose a 25 per cent tariff on countries that do business with Iran. 

“Effective immediately, any country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social in January. 

Iran’s Ambassador to India said on Saturday that the government has not so far conveyed its plans for the future of Iran’s strategic Chabahar port, or which India is a major business partner. 

India announced its 2026 Union Budget in early February, which made no allocation for the Chabahar port project, amid escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran and uncertainty over sanctions.