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Trump targets the Iranian oil ghost fleet [1]

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Date: 2025-05-01

Russia has its "shadow fleet" of oil tankers surreptitiously distributing oil to customers through various nefarious means. Iran has the same problem with sanctions on its ships delivering oil by what is called their "ghost fleet." Same function, just different names to keep them separate. The United States has tracked and sanctioned every Iranian oil tanker it can.

Donald Trump has been trying to negotiate with the Iranians in order to keep them from developing a nuclear weapon. Israel has the same concern for obvious reasons. It would seem that negotiations haven't gone well, even though Trump has said that there had been progress.

Reports are now that negotiations have broken down. Still another failure for Marco Rubio and his team.

Reports for years have said that Iran is only two weeks away from refining uranium into weapons grade. They probably have plenty of it by now. The question is do they have the technology to actually build the bomb? They could have gone to the Russians. They could have gone to North Korea, one of their oil customers. They could give gone to the Chinese, another one of their oil customers. They could have it all ready to go. Or did all of those countries say that adding another nuclear power to the world was not a good idea?

Today, Donald Trump put the world on notice not to have any dealings with Iran.

Donald still hasn't learned that he should be issuing policy statements through the Department of State, instead of tweeting on Truth Social. But, if Trump did anything correctly, it would be a surprise to everyone.

China has been stopping shipments of Iranian oil coming into some of its ports, but they are still taking perhaps 90% of Iran's oil production. Iranians have been doing ship-to-ship transfers at sea to get the oil onto another ship, not sanctioned. This is dangerous with the likelihood of an oil spill, especially since the ships used for this purpose are old, usually with many safety violations if they were inspected. If a receiver of the oil wants to make sure it is not Iranian oil, they can do lab testing of samples. Oil from different sources have different compositions and trace elements that can identify them. I detailed the Iranian oil operation in The Iranian Oil Ghost Fleet back in January.

There is an organization called United Against A Nuclear Iran, that keeps track of all the Iranian oil operations. They have been a big help to the US in finding ships to be sanctioned.

Sanctions are handled by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is part of the Treasury Dept.

China is Iran's largest customer, and with the trade war Trump has started and his declaration today, things just got more complicated. Does he plan to take additional action against China, which is already taking their business elsewhere?

In a story that just keeps getting more complicated, United Against A Nuclear Iran is going to show off a captured Iranian Shahed-136 drone on May 8th in the Cannon Caucus Room (Room 390) at the Cannon House Office Building, with remarks to be delivered by several speakers including Speaker Mike Johnson. I want to know how they got their hands on it, as well as how they're going to get it into the building. The only way would be to disassemble it and reassemble it in the room.

UANI came up with a 100 day plan on Iran for Trump. (PDF). It covers everything you can think of down to restricting movements of Iranian UN officials. UANI is a 501(c)3 non- profit based in the United States and it's Chairman is Jeb Bush.

In the first line of Trump's declaration, besides oil, he says "Petrochemical products." In the case of the main picture above, Iran is delivering not oil to Venezuela, but refined oil products, like gasoline. Venezuela has screwed up their economy so badly they can't build or operate their own refineries.

Trump then mentions "secondary sanctions." The primary sanctions are on Iran itself. There are economic sanctions, international sanctions, embargo, and diplomatic sanctions that can be used on countries doing business with Iran. It can be a mix.

We already have a reverse embargo on China with the 145% tariff. We are only hurting ourselves. China's Foreign Ministry has made clear that they won't be bullied. Will Trump add buying oil from Iran to the complicated mix of problems?

"They will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape, or form."

The next biggest oil customer of Iran is India. This makes things very complex. Prime Minister Modi and Trump are close because Modi is almost a dictator. So how does he handle India?

Trump's final line in his post gets some new attention, probably due to accidentally putting in a comma instead of a period.

"Thank you for your attention to this matter, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP"

It's like he's thanking himself for paying attention to Iran. No closing period or explanation point. Possibly nothing at all to read into it. I just keep looking for signs that Trump is more unstable than the last time. If he truly is on the downward mental trend he seems to be. That's when the 25th Amendment comes into play. He can still talk about nothing for an hour and a half regurgitating his lies and inflated and deflated figures. He can still do interviews and Town Halls, maybe not successfully if you watch sections repeatedly or read transcripts.

In the meantime, Iran has to deal with Trump's new threats to countries taking delivery of Iranian oil and oil products. Cut off their money and Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are starved for weapons. Shutting down Iran's production of drones would make everybody not Iran or a terrorist operation happy indeed. Iran is temporarily without ingredients for solid rocket fuel with the massive explosion of sodium perchlorate that blew up in their harbor facility.

Just like with China, it's a matter of who blinks first. One thing for sure. Trump is not skilled in brinksmanship. Every day he proves that he learned nothing from his ghost writer of "The Art of the Deal."

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