ISRAEL’S entry into the maritime sanctions scene is set to further complicate compliance demands on operators and service providers, who are already contending with complicated and seemingly ever-expanding multi-jurisdictional prohibition regimes.

The Israeli Ministry of Defence’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing unveiled seizure warrants for 18 tankers last week, although three of those were issued in October 2023.

The NBCTF said the 18 tankers helped facilitate Iranian oil sales for the benefit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

Senior officials with the NBCTF told Lloyd’s List that the oil sales were facilitated by prominent terrorist facilitators Muhammad Ja’far Qasir — a Hezbollah financier and Syria-based Qatirji Group, both of which are under US sanctions. The US has a reward of up to $10m for information on Qasir. Qatirji Group chief Muhammad Baraa al-Qatirji was assassinated in July, reportedly by Israel.

The sanctions, the officials said, expose the networks facilitating sales of Iranian oil that ultimately benefit the Qods Force and Hezbollah, and are intended to hamper the tankers’ ability to trade and generate proceeds for them.

Experts say that the Israeli scheme will not have the same “bite” as Western sanctions regime implemented by nations with dominant global currencies and economies such as the US, but that the Israeli measures carry reputational risk, while the underlying allegations could trigger further screening and investigations by service providers that may lead them to sever ties with the sanctioned tankers.

“This does create additional challenges for shipowners, operators, insurers and other service providers,” said Daniel Martin, a partner who advises traders, shipowners, insurers and brokers on sanctions at law firm HFW.

“Any commercial organisation which seeks to operate in a compliant way would prefer to have one single list of sanctioned individuals, entities and vessels, to simplify the screening process. The more that individual nations pursue unilateral actions, the greater the burden on commercial organisations to identify, understand and manage the competing legal restrictions.”

The power of Western sanctions comes largely from the dominance of their financial systems, with blocking of designated entities essentially cutting off their access to those systems, a leverage Israel does not have.

However, the reputational risk of being associated with, or being perceived as facilitating trade with vessels linked to the IRGC or Hezbollah — both designated terrorist organisations in the US — could be enough to sway mainstream actors from doing business with them.

The Israeli sanctions campaign, “seems to be primarily directed not at those who are subject to Israeli jurisdiction, but rather at those who are concerned about the negative publicity associated with dealing with a vessel which has been associated in this way with Iran and the IRGC”, HFW’s Martin said.

“To that extent it may be similar to campaigns by United Against Nuclear Iran and other groups.”

Indeed, the NBCTF officials said they believe mainstream companies will want to avoid any association with entities like the IRGC and Hezbollah. They also said they are proactively reaching out to service providers and industry stakeholders to raise awareness to these designations, and to include Israeli sanctions in global screening lists.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence compliance and regulatory affairs head Eric Orsini said that even if Israeli sanctions lists aren’t ordinarily screened by a company, “the underlying behaviour triggering the sanctions could alert in the negative news screening”.

This, “highlights the need to conduct effective vessel due diligence to identify deceptive shipping practices and not solely rely on screening sanctions lists”.

“On its face, Israeli sanctions will not have the same bite as US, UK, or EU, but creating awareness around these vessels’ activity could ultimately lead to further designations or empower industry stakeholders to refuse doing business with these vessels and related actors,” he added.

The NBCTF officials said the sanctions — and their outreach efforts to service providers and stakeholders — have already resulted in some of the tankers being denied services. The officials said there was “evidence” that some tankers sanctioned in October were denied services like entry to ports but declined to provide specific information about the tankers or incidents in question.

The three tankers sanctioned in October — all for alleged ship-to-ship transfers with Iran-flagged, US-sanctioned 46,267 dwt Jasmine (IMO: 9105085) — are Rival (IMO: 9117818), Sagna (IMO: 7729019) and Confidence P (IMO: 9178044). The 1978-built bunkering tanker Sagna was sent to the Alang recycling facility shortly after Israel sanctioned it, although Lloyd’s List has no evidence that the events are connected. Rival, a 1994-built, 3,481 dwt chemical tanker last broadcast an AIS signal off the Iranian island of Qeshm in December 2022. Confidence P has not performed port calls since 2021, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data, and has been pinging its location infrequently off the coasts of Nigeria and Ghana since January 2024. The Panama-flagged aframax is part of Lloyd’s List dark fleet* list.

A VLCC lifting oil on behalf of an armed forces front company

Sanctions on the remaining 15 tankers were issued on July 30. Ten of those warrants listed a period in which the tanker in question allegedly engaged in activities in support of the IRGC or Hezbollah, while the remaining five generally stated that the vessel was used to ship Iranian oil on behalf of the US-designated terrorist entities.

Among the latter group is the Barbados-flagged VLCC Eline (IMO: 9292486), which the NBCTF says “is used for the transfer of shipments of crude oil from Iran, originating from oil of the Qods Force of the [IRGC]”.

Leaked emails from dissident website WikiIran suggest the VLCC was chartered in September 2023 by Sahara Thunder, which was sanctioned by the US in April 2024 for acting as a front for Iran’s Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics. The leaked emails show Sahara Thunder’s operations department coordinated with the National Iranian Oil Company for Eline, then Liana, to load a cargo in Kharg Island at the end of the month.

Eline’s AIS coordinates on September 25 show it was anchored about 27 km off Tambaseyun-e Kuh Mobarak in Iran, south of the Strait of Hormuz. However, satellite imagery suggests Eline was not at the coordinates and was instead berthed at Iran’s Kharg Island export terminal, hundreds of miles away.