<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. has seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela in back-to-back actions in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
U.S. European Command announced the seizure of the merchant vessel Bella 1 for \u201cviolations of U.S. sanctions\u201d in a social medial post. The U.S. had been pursuing the tanker since last month after it tried to evade a U.S. blockade on sanctioned oil vessels around Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Then, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem revealed that U.S. forces also took control of the tanker Sophia in the Caribbean in a social media post. Noem said both ships were \u201ceither last docked in Venezuela or en route to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. military seized the Bella 1 and subsequently handed over control of it to law enforcement officials, said a U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.<\/p>\n
The ship was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2024 for allegedly smuggling cargo for a company linked to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The U.S. Coast Guard attempted to board it in the Caribbean in December as it headed for Venezuela. The ship refused boarding and headed across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
During this time, the Bella 1 was renamed Marinera and flagged to Russia, shipping databases show. The U.S. official also confirmed that the ship’s crew had painted a Russian flag on the side of the hull.<\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday, open-source maritime tracking sites showed its position as between Scotland and Iceland, traveling north. The U.S. official also confirmed the ship was in the North Atlantic.<\/p>\n
U.S. military planes have flown over the vessel, and on Tuesday a Royal Air Force surveillance plane was shown on flight-tracking sites flying over the same area.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry said before the seizure that it was \u201cfollowing with concern the anomalous situation that has developed around the Russian oil tanker Marinera.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ministry\u2019s statement, which was carried by the official Tass news agency, added that \u201cfor several days now, a U.S. Coast Guard ship has been following the Marinera, even though our vessel is approximately 4,000 km from the American coast.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post to social media, U.S. European Command confirmed that the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro tracked the ship ahead of its seizure \u201cpursuant to a warrant issued by a U.S. federal court.\u201d<\/p>\n
The military command went on to say that the seizure supported President Donald Trump\u2019s proclamation on targeting sanctioned vessels that \u201cthreaten the security and stability of the Western Hemisphere.\u201d The tanker\u2019s seizure comes just days after U.S. military forces conducted a surprise nighttime raid on Venezuela\u2019s capital of Caracas and captured President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife.<\/p>\n
In the wake of this raid, officials in Trump’s Republican administration have said that they intended to continue to seize sanctioned vessels connected to the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are enforcing American laws with regards to oil sanctions,\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC on Sunday. \u201cWe go to court. We get a warrant. We seize those boats with oil. And that will continue.”<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press.\u00a0
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WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. has seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela in back-to-back actions in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, officials said Wednesday. U.S. European Command announced the seizure of the merchant vessel Bella 1 for \u201cviolations of U.S. sanctions\u201d in a social medial post. The U.S. had been pursuing the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4764,1590,2011,4763,1628,4761,3323,4762,2199],"class_list":{"0":"post-15637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jesus","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-caribbean","10":"tag-linked","11":"tag-north","12":"tag-oil","13":"tag-sanctioned","14":"tag-seizes","15":"tag-tankers","16":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}