U.S. military personnel boarded the oil tanker Veronica III in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean, the Pentagon said Sunday, in a continuing effort to enforce U.S. sanctions tied to Venezuela’s oil trade. The Defense Department said the boarding occurred without incident but did not say whether the ship was formally seized.
The U.S. Defense Department said American forces boarded the crude oil tanker Veronica III overnight from Saturday into Sunday in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, describing the operation as a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”
In a post on X, the Pentagon said the ship had attempted to evade what it described as a Trump-ordered “quarantine” targeting sanctioned tankers. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down,” the department said. Video released by the Pentagon showed armed U.S. personnel boarding the vessel without resistance.
U.S. records and sanctions listings describe the Veronica III as a Panamanian-flagged tanker that is under U.S. sanctions linked to Iran. Independent shipping analysts at TankerTrackers.com said the vessel departed Venezuela on January 3 carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil and has been involved in movements of Venezuelan, Iranian and Russian oil since 2023.
The boarding followed a separate U.S. boarding of another tanker, the Aquila II, in the Indian Ocean earlier this month, according to reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets. In that earlier case, a U.S. defense official said the ship was being held while U.S. authorities decided what would happen next.
U.S. officials and outside analysts have said some tankers left Venezuelan waters after the January operation in which the United States says it captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, with TankerTrackers.com estimating at least 16 ships departed in violation of the quarantine.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking on February 9 at Bath Iron Works in Maine as part of what he called an “Arsenal of Freedom Tour,” told shipyard workers the administration intended to pursue vessels that fled U.S. enforcement actions. “The only guidance I gave to my military commanders is none of those are getting away,” he said. “I don’t care if we’ve got to go around the globe to get them—we’re going to get them.”
The Pentagon has not publicly detailed the legal basis for each boarding or seizure and did not confirm whether the Veronica III was formally taken into U.S. custody. In its public statements on the operation, the Defense Department emphasized that it would continue pursuing sanctioned maritime activity far from U.S. shores.
