If the Trump regime were actively seeking to definitively discourage the Iranian government from sending negotiators to Islamabad before the current "ceasefire" expires and it can fully resume its criminal war of aggression, the piratical seizure of an Iranian oil tanker in the Bay of Bengal would appear to be an excellent way to achieve that goal.
NOTE: The NEW YORK TIMES report transmitted below does not question -- indeed, implicitly accepts -- that "networks", "actors" and "oil" can be rendered "illicit" by the U.S. government's imposing illegal unilateral sanctions against any country that it dislikes -- a particularly outrageous manifestation of the infamous "rules-based order", the U.S. dictated alternative to and antithesis of international law (https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/28/what-is-the-rules-based-order).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/world/middleeast/iran-oil-tanker-mt-tifani-us-indian-ocean.html
U.S. Military Stops Tanker Carrying Iranian Oil, Pentagon Says
The seizure was the latest U.S. effort to squeeze Iran’s oil-reliant economy, and came days after the Navy boarded an Iranian cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz.
By Eric Schmitt
The U.S. military on Tuesday stopped and boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean carrying oil from Iran, the Pentagon said in a statement.
It was the latest effort by the Trump administration to squeeze Iran’s oil-reliant economy since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.
“We will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” said a statement from the Defense Department, which included a video that appeared to show Navy SEALS landing by helicopter on the ship, the M/T Tifani.
The Pentagon added that it would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
With the M/T Tifani now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessel and its cargo, which the official said was in the Bay of Bengal. The administration had previously seized several tankers carrying illicit oil from Venezuela following the U.S. commando raid there in January that seized former President Nicolás Maduro.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted at operations like the one overnight Tuesday when he said last week that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
The U.S. Navy has turned back 27 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, the military’s Central Command said on Monday.
On Sunday, a Navy destroyer disabled and seized the Touska, an Iranian cargo ship, after it tried to evade the blockade. It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week.