U.S. military forces boarded the Panama‑flagged Veronica III in the Indian Ocean after it tried to evade a quarantine imposed by President Donald Trump, the Department of War said Sunday.
Officials tracked the vessel all the way from the Caribbean and seized it without incident.
“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down,” the Pentagon said.
We defend the Homeland forward. Distance does not protect you.
Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the Veronica III without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.
The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/Tran3cLR9g
— Department of War 🇺🇸 (@DeptofWar) February 15, 2026
Video posted by the Pentagon showed U.S. troops boarding the tanker.
The Veronica III is a Panamanian‑flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The vessel, reportedly carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, departed Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as President Nicolás Maduro’s capture, according to TankerTrackers.com.
VERONICA III (9326055) departed Venezuela on 2026-01-03 (same day as Maduro’s capture) with a total of around 1.9 million barrels of crude oil and fuel oil. Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil. We know her by her zombie alias; DS VECTOR. https://t.co/zcTDiqdZGA pic.twitter.com/FWt1P8oPYX
— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) February 15, 2026
The Veronica III is the latest in a series of high-profile maritime seizures by the U.S. military aimed at enforcing sanctions and curbing the export of Venezuelan oil.
Trump announced a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela in mid-December after accusing the regime of using oil revenues to fund drug trafficking and other criminal activities.
