Stateless Tankers, Stranded Value
Maritime Asset Seizure and Reappropriation of Iranian Crude
- Type
- Working paper and companion to the Hostile State Asset Denial and Settlement Act. It covers the law from boarding to retention, seizure values, and the effect on Iran’s crude-carriage capacity.
- Governing judgment
- Under existing law, the United States can lawfully seize part of the false-flag fleet that serves Iran, but only ship by ship, and only where it can prove a predicate for the specific hull or cargo and hold jurisdiction over it. A seizure program is unlikely to pay for itself at the custody costs observed so far. Seizure alone is very unlikely to keep Iran’s tanker capacity below its pre-war level for more than about five months.
- Method
- An open-source register of 262 Iran-trade vessel records, screened to 188 candidate tankers broadcasting non-registry or impersonated flags on 8 October 2026. Of those, 156 form a core inventory and 91 carry a documented third-party false-flag finding. The paper also has a legal map, valuation scenarios and a carriage-capacity model.
- Keywords
- Sanctions evasion; shadow fleet; stateless vessels; civil forfeiture; prize law; maritime interdiction; Iran; Strait of Malacca.
- JEL classification
- F51, F52, K33, K42, Q48.
- Data
- The vessel register is Annex A of the paper. The companion workbook holds the register (262 records), the valuation model, the carriage-capacity model and the change log.
- Revision history
- Version 1.0, 22 October 2026: first public release. Posted on SSRN 31 October 2026.
Tankers flying flags no state has granted carry sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil, and carried Venezuelan oil under the Maduro government. This paper asks how much of the Iran-trade fleet the United States can lawfully take, what that would yield, and whether it would deny Iran the ships it needs. It screens an open-source register of 262 Iran-trade vessel records to 188 candidate tankers broadcasting non-registry or impersonated flags on 8 October 2026; 156 form a core inventory and 91 carry a documented third-party false-flag finding. It maps each legal step from boarding to retention, values seizure scenarios, and estimates post-blockade crude-carriage capacity.
The governing judgment is that, under existing law, seizure is lawful only ship by ship; it pays for itself only if custody costs stay well below those observed so far; and on its own it is very unlikely to keep Iran’s carriage capacity below its pre-war level for more than about five months. Seizing 70 percent of the candidates would net about $1.8 billion under stated assumptions, within an illustrative range of −$1.6 billion to $6.5 billion.
Under the central assumptions, removing ships lowers carriage capacity below the pre-war level only if nearly the whole candidate fleet is taken while tankers remain tied up in storage; longer voyage cycles lower that threshold, and an assumed replacement rate closes any shortfall within about five months. The paper sets out policy options and, separately, the author’s proposed maritime title for the Hostile State Asset Denial and Settlement Act.
Lawful only ship by ship, and brief on its own. Seizing 70 percent of the candidates would net about $1.8 billion under the stated assumptions, within an illustrative range of −$1.6 billion to $6.5 billion. Removing ships lowers Iran’s carriage capacity below its pre-war level only if nearly the whole candidate fleet is taken while tankers remain tied up in storage, and an assumed replacement rate closes the shortfall within about five months. Lasting denial depends on cutting off the supply of replacement tankers.
Read the paper
What this paper does not establish
The inventory is a candidate list until each ship is checked against registry records. Most medium-confidence findings come from tables dated 12 May 2026, and an October broadcast of a flag found false in May is evidence of continuing misuse, not proof that a ship has no nationality. Before any action, each ship needs a documented identity, a current registration check, confirmation from the named administration and dated evidence of recent Iranian trade.
Valuation and denial inputs not tied to a source are assumptions and are labeled as such. Fleet size, cycle time and the replacement rate are modeling assumptions, and the denial result is a model output, not an observation. Litigation risk and delay are not discounted.
The reviews of this paper checked arithmetic and consistency. They are not source authentication, legal validation or a substitute for specialist review. Nothing in this paper is legal or investment advice.
Suggested citation
George, Collin B. Stateless Tankers, Stranded Value: Maritime Asset Seizure and Reappropriation of Iranian Crude. Working paper, WP-2026 series, version 1.0. Sanctir, 22 October 2026. SSRN 7671019.