File photograph: An Iranian vessel off Sri Lanka in March
Around twenty empty Iranian oil tankers are drifting some fifteen miles off Sri Lanka's southwest coast, their engines idled to conserve fuel, with food, fuel and fresh water running short aboard, after the United States pressed Colombo to cut off their supplies.
The Wall Street Journal reports that in August the US embassy in Colombo informed the Sri Lankan government it was tracking 19 Iranian tankers off the country's western coast, and urged officials to tell local port service providers to deny them support or face US secondary sanctions. The paper cites Sri Lankan government documents it has seen, alongside accounts from companies that supply ships.
Many of the vessels then pulled away from Sri Lankan territorial waters and drifted deeper into the Indian Ocean.
When two Iranian-flagged container vessels anchored within the port limits of Colombo in early September, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority wrote that it was not "prudent to provide services to Iranian-flagged" vessels, because of the risk of US sanctions.
Dubai-based shipping agents have pleaded with Sri Lankan businesses to send out fresh food and fuel, according to the Journal, but representatives of Sri Lankan shipping companies say approval from the port authorities has become difficult to obtain.
The owner of a Sri Lankan ship repair company that sent a team aboard an Iranian vessel shortly before the restrictions took effect found provisions running down. Repair crews are normally fed on board and can wash there; this crew told them to bring their own food and said they could not wash, because the vessel had to conserve fresh water.
Another Sri Lankan shipper said he had received desperate calls for food and provisions from agents of the tankers, and that the authorities were not approving supply visits.
Thushara Rodrigo, a spokesman for Sri Lanka's foreign ministry, acknowledged the risk that sanctioned ships might run out of food, fuel and water, saying that private companies could be reluctant to supply them and take on the risk of sanctions.
Asked by radio whether there was enough food aboard, one Iranian ship replied in Farsi: "Do not worry about our food."
In mid-September the US embassy in Colombo ran a three-day session with more than 40 Sri Lankan officials , setting out the risk of US penalties where shipping agents, fuel providers and other service companies knowingly or unknowingly support sanctioned vessels. The programme was delivered through the State Department's Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction in partnership with the Atlantic Council, and was attended by the navy, the coast guard, the Ports Authority, the Central Bank, the Merchant Shipping Secretariat, the Ministry of Defence and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Council.
"Sri Lanka sits at a strategic crossroads for global commerce, bringing both tremendous opportunity and the need for vigilance," the US ambassador Eric Meyer said at the time, describing the work as sharing American expertise with Sri Lankan partners.
A week later the embassy and the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence ran a five-day workshop with the Sri Lankan navy on detecting the trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials.
The State Department has said the United States will continue to disrupt, expose and dismantle Iran's illicit oil trade. It did not respond to the Journal's request for comment on the conditions facing the crews.
Before the war, ships carrying Iranian crude would run it to international waters off Malaysia and transfer it to other tankers bound for Chinese refineries, an arrangement built to evade US sanctions on Iranian oil, before returning to Iran to load again.
The United States reimposed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in July, and the vessels cannot go home. Asian ports that once serviced them now refuse, for fear of US sanctions, leaving them adrift. Container ships carrying goods such as corn and industrial materials to Iran have been caught in the same squeeze.
Analysts expect the last of the Iranian oil awaiting transfer to run out within weeks, with payments to Iran concluding by the end of the year. "All revenues drop to zero for Iran by December," said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler.
Sri Lanka has previously said no concerns had been raised over the Iranian vessels anchored off its coast.
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