A new Iranian oil tanker lands in Venezuela

A new Iranian oil tanker landed in Venezuela on Sunday, loaded with two million barrels of gas condensate. The Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Jorge Arreaza, through his Twitter account detailed the arrival of the ship at the Storage and Shipping Terminal in Jose, northwest of the Latin American country.
The Iranian vessel Honey - the name of the ship - "sailed to the unnamed country to avoid being identified", evading the naval blockade that the United States intends to impose on Venezuela, wrote Arreaza in his account.

Tanker Trackers, the independent online service for maritime activities, confirmed the arrival of the Iranian supertanker type VLCC. The Bloomberg agency also confirmed the arrival of this ship. "She most likely sailed all over southern Africa as her transponder was switched off. The name and IMO number have been painted," the maritime service said. 

In mid-August, four tankers allegedly carrying gasoline from Iran to Venezuela were seized by U.S. authorities, according to Reuters. Official sources, according to the agency, said the ships were seized peacefully and the cargo they were carrying was transferred to other vessels for shipment to the United States.

This seizure order was taken by Tehran as an act of piracy, and the spokesman for Iran's United Nations office, Alireza Miryousefi, said that "any attempt on the high seas to prevent Iran from engaging in legal trade with any country it chooses will be an act of piracy, pure and simple".

The first Iranian supply to the Caribbean country came in May last year, when five oil tankers carrying 1.5 million barrels arrived at Puerto Cabello.

Venezuela is the country with the largest number of oil reserves in the world, but the crisis suffered over the last two decades, which has led to misery for much of the population and even to rationing and black market sales of petrol, has led it to seek oil outside the country. As a result of these actions, Donald Trump, the US president, has decided on several occasions to extend the sanctions against the Iranian regime for supplying hydrocarbons to Caracas..

The Bloomberg agency published at the end of April how Teheran was transporting up to nine tonnes of gold from Venezuela to Teheran on planes belonging to the Persian company Mahan Air, as payment for the aid Iran is providing to revive the sources of petrol that have ground to a halt in Venezuela. For its part, Teheran denied sending this gold and rejected Washington's accusations. 

Since the time of the late Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), diplomatic relations between Caracas and Teheran have been very close. The international isolation to which the Islamic Republic has been subjected has forced it to seek new partners at the international level. This alliance has been understood by the United States, first as a violation of the sanctions imposed by Washington on Hassan Rohani's government, and secondly as contrary to the hardline policy the Trump administration is pursuing against Maduro's government in order to force its downfall.