US Forces Board Tanker in Indian Ocean as Trump Targets Venezuelan Oil

President Donald Trump's blockade of Venezuelan oil—condemned as "piracy" by critics around the world—continued on Monday, with the US Department of Defense announcing that overnight, "military forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding on the Aquila II without incident" in the Indian Ocean.

"When the Department of War says quarantine, we mean it. Nothing will stop DOW from defending our homeland—even in oceans halfway around the world," the Pentagon declared on social media, using Trump's preferred department name. "The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump's established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean. It ran, and we followed."

"The Department of War tracked and hunted this vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean," the department continued. "No other nation on planet Earth has the capability to enforce its will through any domain. By land, air, or sea, our armed forces will find you and deliver justice."

"You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us," the Pentagon added. "The Department of War will deny illicit actors and their proxies the ability to defy American power in the global maritime domain."

The department also shared a video and photos from the operation, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged during a visit to the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, a stop on his national Arsenal of Freedom tour.

According to the Associated Press:

Following the US raid to apprehend then-President Nicolás Maduro in early January, several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight.

Hegseth vowed to eventually capture all those ships, telling a group of shipyard workers in Maine on Monday that "the only guidance I gave to my military commanders is none of those are getting away."

"I don't care if we got to go around the globe to get them; we’re going to get them," he added.

Citing an unnamed dense official, the AP also reported that "the Aquila II has not been formally seized and placed under US control," unlike seven other Venezuela-linked tankers previously taken by the Trump administration. Instead, the news agency explained, the Panamanian-flagged ship "is being held while its ultimate fate is decided by the US."

Reuters noted that Aquila II "was carrying about 700,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude bound for China," based on schedules from the Venezuelan state oil and gas company, PDVSA.

In addition to Trump's efforts to hand Venezuela's nationalized oil industry over to fossil fuel companies that helped him secure another term, the president is ramping up US pressure on the Cuban economy by depriving the island nation of Venezuelan oil.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, accused Trump of "laying siege to the island of Cuba: asphyxiating its people, shuttering its hospitals, starving them of food."

After news of US forces boarding the Aquila II broke, Adler added: "Jesus christ. The United States is now intercepting oil tankers in the INDIAN OCEAN that dare to carry oil to starving Cuba. The Donroe Doctrine is not simply a vision for the hemisphere. It is a doctrine of global domination."