Tehran, IRNA – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has seized two foreign tankers in the Persian Gulf for smuggling fuel.
In a statement on Monday, the Public Relations Department of the IRGC’s Second Maritime Region said it had confiscated the tankers, identified as Start 1 and Vintage, earlier in the day while they were smuggling over three million liters of diesel fuel.
The statement said that all 25 crew members of the two vessels were also arrested.
The tankers were identified through intelligence monitoring by the fighters of the IRGC’s Second Maritime Region of Imam Hassan Mojtaba (AS) in Bushehr and were transferred to the Bushehr oil dock with a judicial order to seize and unload the smuggled fuel, it added.
In recent years, Iranian authorities have stepped up measures to combat fuel smuggling.
Iran, where government subsidies keep fuel prices among the lowest in the world, has struggled for years with fuel smuggling, especially along its southern maritime borders.
The substantial price gap between fuel in Iran and neighboring countries has turned smuggling into a highly profitable illicit business.
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