The November incident was the latest example of the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive maritime strategy.
Published December 12, 2025
In the latest reported example of President Donald Trump’s administration’s increasingly aggressive maritime tactics, the U.S. military last month raided a cargo ship heading from China to Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to Friday’s report, anonymous sources told the paper that U.S. military personnel boarded the ship from hundreds of miles away from Sri Lanka. It was the first time in recent years that the U.S. military had intercepted cargo bound for Iran from China, the newspaper said.
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The operation took place in November, weeks before the U.S. military seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela for violating sanctions earlier this week. This was another action Washington hasn’t taken in years.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately confirm the report. Officials told the newspaper that they had seized material that “could be useful for Iranian conventional weapons.” However, officials noted that the seized items were dual-use and could be used for both military and civilian purposes.
Officials said the ship was allowed to sail following an interdiction involving special operations forces.
Iran remains under strict US sanctions. Neither Iran nor China immediately reacted to the report, but Beijing, Tehran’s main trading partner, has regularly insisted that U.S. sanctions are illegal.
Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Guo Jiakun condemned the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela that was brought to a port in Texas on Friday.
The action came amid a wide-ranging military pressure campaign against Venezuela, which the Caracas government accused of aiming to overthrow the government of leader Nicolas Maduro.
Guo said China “opposes unilateral and illegal sanctions, long-term jurisdiction, and sanctions abuses that have no basis in international law or UN Security Council approval.”
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters Thursday that the Trump administration would not rule out seizing ships near Venezuela in the future.
