DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian state television claimed this week that a foreign ship got stuck in the Strait of Hormuz after ignoring instructions to use a route laid out by the Islamic Republic's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
But the ship is tied to Iran — and seems to have been in the strait for months.
The vessel, based on its shape, reported location and other details, is the container ship Arista, reportedly flying a false flag
linking it to the island nation of Comoros. That ship was known last year as the Panama-flagged Gauja, which the U.S. Treasury included in sanctions targeting what it described as a network that had been “generating tens of billions of dollars in profit” for Iran's ruling elite.
Here’s a closer look.
Iranian state television aired on-screen alerts Wednesday about what it described as a foreign ship that got stuck ignoring the commands of the Guard's navy.
“A foreign container ship, because of choosing a route other than the one designated under the Iranian order, has run aground in the Strait of Hormuz," a state TV news anchor said in the segment, which included images of the ship grounded. "This comes as the navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has consistently warned that any entry into or exit from routes other than ‘the Route of Authority’ in the Persian Gulf could lead to irreparable incidents.”
The report appeared aimed at underlining Tehran’s claim that it controls the strait, a major corridor for oil and natural gas shipments. Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran has used its ability to choke off the waterway as a key source of leverage, disrupting global markets for energy and other critical goods.
TankerTrackers.com, a company tracking oil shipments at sea, was one of the first expert sources to identify the ship as the Arista. Footage shot by an Armenian news outlet matches the ship in the state television footage to the Arista, pointing to the colors of the containers on its deck and the paint scheme of the vessel. Iranian state TV did not air a close-up image of the ship’s name or its registration number. In one shot, it blurred the vessel’s name.
Marine tracking data shows the Arista has been stuck north of Hormuz Island in Iran's territorial waters since the middle of March. The ship had been traveling between Hormuz and Asaluyeh, another Iranian port, when it got stuck, tracking data shows.
Iranian state television and Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to questions Thursday from The Associated Press about its reporting.
On July 30, the U.S. Treasury linked the Arista — under its former name, the Gauja — to a massive oil smuggling ring run by Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, a son of Ali Shamkhani, who had been a top security adviser to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The senior Shamkhani was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war along with Khamenei.
The Treasury Department alleged the smuggling ring moved sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil and other goods to buyers around the world.
“The Shamkhani family’s shipping empire highlights how the Iranian regime elites leverage their positions to accrue massive wealth and fund the regime’s dangerous behavior,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement at the time.
After the sanctions were levied, the Gauja changed its name to the Arista and began flying a Comoros flag, which shipping data shows is a “false” flag for the ship — a flag used to disguise a vessel's origins. Sanctioned ships in Iran's so-called shadow fleet frequently use this practice.
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