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Notes -
Don't know if this belongs here or the culture war or small scale questions. But the US has sized a Venezuelan oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. I would like to know what makes this different than piracy, if anything.
The US says it had a "seizure warrant" for it. What does that mean? Was the vessel subject to US laws at any point, violated them, and this is the result?
The US says that the tanker is sanctioned. What does this mean? Economic sanctions usually mean, "I won't do business with you," can a sanction mean, "I won't let you do business with someone else, and if you do I'll seize your vessel in your waters?" At what point is a sanction a war with fancier language?
"Guyana's maritime authority said Skipper was falsely flying the country's flag." Does this impact the legal calculation?
Outside of the numerous questions, I'm getting Iraq war vibes from this. "They support terrorism! They have weapons of mass intoxication! The people will thank us, the leader is a dictator, etc etc."
Will the US have boots on the ground in Venezuela in a year? It seems so contrary to Trump's MO, what is going on here?
The United States issued a number of sanctions in 2022 related to the transfer of Iranian-originated oil in violation of US law. The Skipper, then operating as the Adisa, was one of the ships in question. See here for another example.
The seizure warrant is sealed, unsurprisingly, but it's almost certainly issued based on further evidence that the ship was being used to transport oil to sanctioned countries.
There's some messy legal philosophy stuff involved, here; the actual behaviors are not new.
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If a vessel is flying a false flag outside of the 3 nautical mile territorial waters, in what sense is it "your vessel" or "your waters"? A private vessel enjoys the protection of the sovereign under which they lawfully are flagged, not ultimate ownership. You can check the AIS records yourself, they were broadcasting under the Guyana flag, but Guyana says they are not registered there.
The US and Venezuela are not signatories to UNCLOS, but by normative convention they were almost certainly not in territorial waters. They might have been in the contiguous zone, but more likely "off the coast" means they were in the exclusive economic zone, which only provides exclusive rights over economic activities like fishing. Other navies could very well conduct anti-smuggling operations against un-flagged or false-flagged vessels in those zones.
I'm actually much more okay with this than drone-killing random small boats, without offering them the chance to surrender. Large vessels abusing AIS reduces safety at sea and freedom of navigation for everyone.
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