Iran's largest sanctions-evasion network passed its tankers through 21 European port inspections between 2022 and 2025. On the day of each call, neither the ship nor its recorded manager was on any sanctions list. Each time a management company was sanctioned, the fleet had already moved to the next name, an analysis of Paris MoU and registry records in the Maritime Watch Mariel database shows.
The fleet is attributed by the US Treasury to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, son of Ali Shamkhani, a political adviser to the Supreme Leader of Iran. Washington designated more than 50 individuals and entities and more than 50 vessels tied to the network on 30 July 2025, its largest Iran-related sanctions action since 2018. The network moves both Iranian and Russian oil, the Treasury says, generating tens of billions of dollars.
The fleet "undergoes frequent changes in the operators and managers of each vessel", the Treasury wrote, so that responsibility cannot be traced back to the family.
In the months before the EU's Russian oil bans took effect, three tankers were re-registered under identical structures: the Versa, the Mishell and the Toa Payoh, all now designated by Washington. Each got a single-ship owning company, Dubai-based Fractal Marine DMCC as commercial manager, Macario Shipping LLC as safety manager, the Panama flag and a new name.
Management then rotated. Wanta Shipping took over in 2023. BPT Shipping was recorded as manager of the Mishell on 22 February 2024, the day the UK sanctioned Fractal Marine. Zulu Ships Management and Tarabya Logistics followed.
The rotation outpaced the designation lists. Ships under Wanta passed 12 European inspections before Wanta was designated. The margin narrowed from 15 months for Wanta to ten weeks for Tarabya, but it never closed. Four of the five managers recorded in the inspection reports are now sanctioned in Washington, Brussels or London. All 17 ships they took through European ports are designated.
An EU listing means a European port ban, but a listing by Washington or London does not. Sanctions status forms no part of a Paris MoU inspection; port state control checks safety, crewing and pollution. Two of the 21 inspections ended in detention on deficiency grounds, and both ships were released.
Designation triggered a change of identity rather than an exit from trade. On the dates of their listings, the registered owners of the three tankers were recorded in IHS registry data as sold to undisclosed interests, with safety management passing to unknown. Bureau Veritas withdrew the Toa Payoh's certification two days after her US listing. Korean Register withdrew the Mishell's later that month at the owner's request.
The ships then began claiming flags their registries do not recognise. Registry data records false Guinea and Madagascar claims for the Mishell and Toa Payoh from October 2025, and false Cameroon claims for all three by mid-2026. A ship in that state has no flag state, no certification and no verifiable insurance. She cannot enter a port where papers are checked. Since designation the recorded calls run through Novorossiisk, Tuapse, El Dekheila, Cotonou and Lomé.
The false Cameroon claims postdate Yaoundé's pledge to deregister shadow fleet tankers, and the EU's move to negotiate a flag-state agreement with Cameroon. The records cannot show whether these hulls were ever on Cameroon's register. They show a flag being claimed by ships the register does not recognise.
Even designation has not ended the fleet's European encounters. On 19 February 2026 Denmark detained the container ship Nora, designated by Washington under her previous name Cerus, at Skagen. Her safety manager by then was an Iranian company. At the end of May 2026 the French navy intercepted the Tagor off Brittany, sailing under what French officials called a false Cameroonian flag, and escorted her to the Bay of Douarnenez, Euronews reported. Greek inspectors had detained her for 11 days on deficiency grounds in December 2023, and released her. That inspection was one of the 21.
IHS registry data lists the three tankers as in service, though none has a recorded call sign. The Versa was last inspected at Malacca in March 2026 and the Mishell at Cotonou in June. The Toa Payoh's last record is from Tuapse in March 2026, where Russian port state control detained her.
See also: EU targets open registries in bid to crack down on shadow fleet
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