A Chinese oil tanker under sanctions recently attempted to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, only to turn back to Iran due to a blockade ordered by President Trump, as shown by ship tracking information.
The vessel in question, the Rich Starry, sails under a Malawian flag and is owned by a Chinese entity. It was blacklisted by the United States in 2023. This incident highlights the effectiveness of the US Navy’s efforts to halt the movement of ships transporting Iranian oil.
Amid ongoing conflict, the majority of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz have been laden with Iranian goods, providing crucial revenue to the financially beleaguered nation.
To date, the US-imposed blockade on the Strait’s eastern side in the Gulf of Oman has successfully prevented at least five vessels from venturing into international waters, as reported by trade analytics company Kpler.
Iran has severely restricted almost all other maritime traffic through the Strait by threatening to target tankers that refuse to pay a ransom, a route that once handled 20% of global oil shipments.
The Rich Starry had previously been implicated in aiding Iran to circumvent oil sanctions. The tanker concealed its whereabouts in the Persian Gulf for over ten days before its attempt to exit the Strait of Hormuz on a Monday night, according to Kpler’s data.
The tanker, owned by the Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping Company and loaded with 250,000 barrels of methanol, initially appeared to make it through the blockade, but updated tracking data revealed the ship stopped in the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday.
The ship then made a U-turn back through the Strait of Hormuz before stopping off the coast of Suza in Iran’s Qeshm Island, near the mouth of the strait, where it remains.
“This is the blockade working as CENTCOM [US Central Command] described: a vessel heading toward an Iranian port, turned back before it could load,” Kpler analysts told CNN.
CENTCOM boasted that six merchant ships were caught and forced to dock along the Gulf of Oman within the first 24 hours of the blockade, which went into effect on Monday at 10 a.m. EST.
Among the ships was the Elips, a Comoros-flagged methanol carrier that was also under US sanctions, which was also caught being stopped at the same place the Rich Starry was intercepted.
Kpler’s data shows that all the tankers that tried to run the blockade were sitting idle along the Islamic Republic’s coastlines.
At least two of the tankers were directly intercepted by a US destroyer patrolling the waters, a US official told Reuters.
CENTCOM has said that more than two dozen warships were enforcing the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, along with 10,000 service members.
It remains to be seen if the blockade can be 100% successful in stopping all of Iran’s maritime trade through the Strait of Hormuz, as its shadow fleet has spent years developing tactics to avoid detection in the high seas.
“They are experts at evading detection,” Bridget Diakun, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a shipping analysis firm, told the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s not just one or two of them that are doing this; it’s a lot of them,” she added.
Llyod’s found that at least 10 ships tried traveling through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, including the Panama-flagged bulk carrier Manali, which had a history of spoofing its location to avoid being tracked.
Only ships leaving and dealing with Iran are subject to the blockade, according to CENTCOM, with the Manali listing its destination as a port in the United Arab Emirates.
Military and shipping analysts have warned that Iran’s shadow fleet would be trying to test the limits of the blockade and America’s ability to analyze their movements and cargo to see whether they were abiding by the new rules.
President Trump ordered the blockade after peace talks with Iran broke down over the weekend, with the US looking to inflict economic pressure on Iran to end its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Since the war broke out on Feb. 28, only a handful of ships have crossed the strait each day, a fraction compared to the more than 130 that passed every day before the conflict.
The majority of the ships that have crossed were linked to Iran and China, with Tehran looking to take full control of the passage and charge tolls as high as $2 million to cross.
As China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, faces its own economic woes due to the conflict, Trump assured Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the Strait of Hormuz is open for business.
“China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also – And the World,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This situation will never happen again.”
