U.S. military forces boarded the Bertha oil tanker in the Indian Ocean overnight, the Pentagon said Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, describing the action as a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding” after tracking the ship from the Caribbean.
The Pentagon said the operation took place “without incident” in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility and alleged the vessel tried to evade enforcement tied to U.S. sanctions policy toward Venezuela.
The boarding is the third publicly acknowledged interdiction of a tanker in recent weeks under the Trump administration’s expanded effort to stop sanctioned oil shipments moving from Venezuela through global supply chains. The Pentagon did not say Tuesday whether the vessel was formally seized or diverted, and it did not provide details on the crew or cargo handling after the boarding.
What the Pentagon says happened to the Bertha oil tanker
U.S. Southern Command said U.S. forces boarded the Bertha oil tanker overnight after it operated “in defiance” of President Donald Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and “attempted to evade.” In its description, the military tracked the ship from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean and then conducted the boarding.
The Pentagon also released video showing U.S. helicopters approaching the tanker during the operation. The footage offered a rare look at the scale of force typically used for a compliant boarding in open water, including aerial overwatch and a coordinated approach to the deck.
The Pentagon’s public language left a key question unanswered: whether the boarding was a temporary inspection and verification action, or the first step in a seizure and transfer of control. The statement did not use the word “seized,” and officials said they had nothing further to add beyond the Southern Command post.
Why the Bertha oil tanker is sanctioned
The Bertha oil tanker appears on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list under the Iran-related program IRAN-EO13902. Treasury records list the vessel’s flag as the Cook Islands and identify it as a crude oil tanker, with an IMO number of 9292163 and the alias “MONICA S.”
Treasury has previously described the Bertha as part of activity tied to what it calls Iran’s “shadow fleet,” a network of vessels and facilitators used to move oil in ways that obscure origin and ownership. In a December 2024 sanctions announcement, Treasury said the BERTHA and other vessels had been involved in the illicit transport of Iranian oil since at least 2022, and linked management activity to a China-based ship management company.
In the Pentagon’s account Tuesday, the boarding was framed through Venezuela enforcement, not Iran enforcement, reflecting how the ship’s sanctions exposure can intersect with multiple policy tracks. Tracking a vessel across oceans, and then boarding it in a different combatant command’s area, also signals a level of coordination that goes beyond a single regional patrol.
