Maritime logistics and intelligence company Windward AI published a report on Wednesday that claimed Iran has slipped up to $800 million worth of crude oil past the U.S. Navy blockade by electronically disguising its tankers as Iraqi ships.
“Deceptive shipping practices are escalating, with 10 Iran-trading, U.S.-sanctioned tankers actively spoofing their locations to appear anchored off Basrah, Iraq,” Windward AI reported.
“This reflects a long-established evasion tactic. Tankers manipulate AIS signals and transmit false voyage data indicating Iraqi destinations, often supported by fake ownership messages,” the report said.
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“In practice, these vessels divert to Iranian ports to load sanctioned crude, while AIS data shows them arriving at Iraq and later departing laden, creating the appearance of compliant trade,” it said.
AIS is the Automated Identification System, a shipboard broadcasting system that transmits location and identification data to other ships at sea. The AIS is a tremendous aid to maritime safety and efficiency, because it gives users a real-time map of the position, heading, and speed of other ships around them, with greater range and accuracy than commercial shipboard radar.
AIS spoofing is a key tactic of the “shadow fleet,” the network of cargo ships and tankers that carry illegal cargoes in defiance of sanctions. The technique is also used by smuggling gangs and ships operating on the fringes of legal commerce.
Deceiving the AIS system is not very hard. The crew needs only to manually edit the identification and positional data transmitted by the ship. Some deceptions involve multiple ships broadcasting false AIS data in tandem, as in the case of a “clean” ship that sails close to a criminal vessel and then swaps AIS signatures with them.
It can be very difficult for maritime authorities to penetrate these electronic deceptions, and they represent a major threat to maritime safety, since legitimate ships rely on the AIS system for navigation.
Windward AI named all ten of the ships it has detected using AIS spoofing and fraudulent registries to evade the blockade. Two of them, the tankers Paola and Adena, are broadcasting false “Iraqi owner” signals linked to an Iranian oil smuggling operation that is known to the U.S. Treasury Department.
The other ships are using false registries under the flags of Curacao, Hong Kong, Malawi, Guyana, and Comoros. Windward AI said all ten ships are displaying “clear spoofing indicators, including repeated positional patterns and erratic AIS trails.” Another giveaway is that some of the ships falsely claimed to have loaded oil at Iraqi ports favored by Iranian smugglers.
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It was not clear from the Windward AI report how successful these electronic deceptions have been. According to the security briefing, a large group of “Iran-trading vessels” has been “confined west of Hormuz under blockade pressure,” which means they are trapped in the Persian Gulf. The briefing implied that at least some of the Iranian shadow fleet ships have been able to slip past the blockade.
“Risk is no longer concentrated within the Strait itself. As enforcement pressure persists, vessel behavior is shifting outward, with increased reliance on concealment, spoofing, and staging in peripheral areas such as Chabahar and Bandar Abbas,” the report added.
Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said the blockade reached a “significant milestone” on Wednesday after “redirecting the 42nd commercial vessel attempting to violate the blockade.”
“This is a reflection of the outstanding work America’s sons and daughters in uniform are doing to prevent maritime commerce from entering or exiting Iranian ports,” he said.
“Right now there are 41 tankers with 69 million barrels of oil that the Iranian regime can’t sell. That’s an estimated $6 billion-plus from which Iran’s leadership cannot financially benefit. The blockade is highly effective and U.S. forces remain fully committed to total enforcement,” Cooper said.
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