Iranian Jet Fuel is Powering Myanmar Junta's Civil War
An investigation by Reuters has revealed that Iranian exports of jet fuel to Myanmar are sustaining the military junta’s campaign against insurgency the regime faces in many different areas of the country. In the civil war in Myanmar, the military junta has consistently attacked unambiguously civilian targets such as schools and hospitals, in a campaign which has intensified in recent months. The regimes in both Iran and Myanmar are subject to extensive international sanctions.
Reuters tracked the progress of one particular shipment of jet fuel, to illustrate how the trade is handled.
The National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company oil products loading terminal in the Bandar Abbas Commercial Port (Google Earth/CJRC)
On September 15, the 144m Guinea-registered oil products tanker Reef (IMO 9263382) loaded jet fuel at Bandar Abbas, while its AIS system falsely located the tanker as being at the offshore Basra Oil Terminal in Iraq. Reef’s AIS system showed the tanker progressing down the Gulf on September 16. In evidently an incompetent AIS spoofing operation, the tanker covered the last 178 nautical miles of the journey into the Rajaei commercial port in Bandar Abbas in three minutes rather than in ten hours, where it tied up at the oil products loading berth run by the state-owned National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company.
The Reef subsequently unloaded its cargo in the port of Thilawa near Yangon on October 2, while its AIS system was showing it to be in Chittagong, in Bangladesh.
The Reef has made multiple journeys on this route since October 2024, as has another oil products tanker, the 182m Noble (IMO 9162928), registered in Guinea. The Noble appears to have been at the same fuel-loading berth in Bandar Abbas commercial port on September 19. Both vessels have had multiple flag and name changes in recent years. Both have been managed by Sea Route Ship Management FZE, a company established in Sharjah in the UAE in 2020, and apparently still commercially registered (the firm did not answer telephone inquiries). All were sanctioned by the US Treasury OFAC on June 27, 2024.
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Iranian vessels have also been noted shipping urea to Myanmar, which can be used in the production of urea nitrate, which in turn can be used as an explosive filler in air-delivered bombs.
Iran and Myanmar both have well-documented records on human rights and law and order. Just as IRGC internal security forces during the recent unrest in Iran used extreme violence to clear streets of protestors, the approach adopted in Myanmar is similar, entailing the bombing and indiscriminate massacre of civilian populations in contested areas.
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