Article, The Hidden Victims of the Shadow Fleet https://hakaimagazine.com/news/the-hidden-victims-of-the-shadow-fleet/
As staff at the ship-tracking service Tanker Trackers noted, the Pablo had spent years smuggling Iranian oil. The vessel also featured on a list of ships under investigation for sanctions-busting by the organization United Against Nuclear Iran. It quickly became clear that for as long as Tripathi had been working on the ship, the vessel he’d called home had been smuggling oil for the Iranian regime. The ship was a member of the so-called shadow fleet, which emerged in 2018 shortly after the United States reimposed a flood of sanctions against Iran. The sanctions had been waived in 2015 as part of an international effort to end Iran’s nuclear program. But in May 2018, then-president Donald Trump reversed course. In response, Iran enlisted a fleet of vintage tankers to secretly transport its oil without US oversight.