US military forces raided a sanctioned oil tanker linked to Venezuela, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
Footage posted online by the Department of War showed the moment armed troops flew in by helicopter and boarded the Veronica III in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea.
The vessel left Venezuela on January 3, the same day Nicolas Maduro was captured, carrying around 1.9million barrels of crude and fuel oil, according to an X post by TankerTrackers.com.
‘Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,’ the organisation said.
The Department of War said in an X post on Sunday: ‘Overnight, US forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the Veronica III without incident in the INDOPACOM [United States Indo-Pacific Command] area of responsibility.
‘The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine - hoping to slip away.
'We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.
'No other nation has the reach, endurance, or will to do this.
‘International waters are not sanctuary. By land, air, or sea, we will find you and deliver justice.’
The department added that it ‘will deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of movement in the maritime domain’.
It shared photos of at least 15 US soldiers on the tanker armed with rifles and night vision equipment.
The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel currently under US sanctions related to Iran.
According to Open Sanctions, it is ‘engaged in the illegal transportation of hundreds of thousands of metric tons of sanctioned Iranian oil’.
Sunday’s raid in the Indian Ocean is the latest in a series of maritime interventions by the US military aimed at enforcing sanctions and stopping Venezuelan oil exports.
At least eight other oil tankers have been seized in the past year.
Last week US forces captured the Aquila II, which was also trying to flee quarantine.
The tanker was the eighth ship captured by the US since the Trump administration started its crusade against illegal oil shipments in the Caribbean, hoping to cut off Venezuela's main profits.
The Aquila II was among the several vessels that attempted to escape the area in early January after Maduro was captured by US special forces.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on X: 'It ran, and we followed. By land, air or sea, our Armed Forces will find you and deliver justice.
'You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us.'
The US is understood to have sanctioned the Aquila II on January 10, saying it was transporting Russian oil.
It was already sanctioned by the UK for its connections to Russia.
The Department of War posted footage on X showing US troops raiding the tanker.
'When the Department of War says quarantine, we mean it,' the post read.
'Nothing will stop DOW from defending our Homeland - even in oceans halfway around the world.'
