Iranian oil tankers stranded off Sri Lanka are running out of supplies, WSJ reports

About 24 kilometres off Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast, around 20 empty Iranian oil tankers are stranded, with their engines off, while food, fuel and drinking water are running out, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

They are the most visible consequence of the new American pressure campaign to bring Iran to its knees, the newspaper writes. Dozens of Iranian or Iran-linked tankers, which took part in the covert trade in sanctioned oil to China, have been stuck in waters near Asian countries such as Sri Lanka and Malaysia since July, when the United States reimposed the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

In recent weeks, American officials have put pressure on Sri Lanka to prevent local vessels from supplying the tankers and their crews, according to Sri Lankan government documents and the companies that supply those vessels — documents cited by the WSJ.

Before the war, the vessels carrying Iranian oil took it to international waters near Malaysia, where they transferred it to other tankers that then transported it to Chinese refineries — a complicated operation designed to evade American sanctions. Now the blockade has dealt a blow to this trade: the Iranian vessels cannot return home, and the latest wave of American sanctions has made some Asian ports that once served them now refuse them for fear of US sanctions.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday shared a New York Post report citing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to whom Iran may be left with nothing to trade once it completes its final oil deliveries to China — a sign that the American administration sees economic squeezing as the path to concessions from Tehran.