Iran claims a foreign ship got stuck in Strait of Hormuz. But it is tied to Tehran

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.

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.

Read more: AP