The US Navy will find this tough to interdict
According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran is allegedly shipping munitions to Russia via the Caspian Sea.
This would have the effect of reducing shipping costs by at least 80%.
It really is remarkable how effectively Russia is bypassing US sanctions.
I am sure that other nations of the world at risk for US sanctions, which would mean every other nation on earth except perhaps for Canada, the UK, Israel, and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, are probably taking notes:
Russian ships are ferrying large quantities of Iranian artillery shells and other ammunition across the Caspian Sea to resupply troops fighting in Ukraine, Middle East officials said, posing a growing challenge for the U.S. and its allies as they try to disrupt cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.
Over the past six months, cargo ships have carried more than 300,000 artillery shells and a million rounds of ammunition from Iran to Russia, according to the officials and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Intelligence about the shipments has been shared with the U.S., people familiar with the matter said.
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The U.S. and its allies have been looking for ways to disrupt transfers of weapons from Iran, which has also been an important supplier of drones to the Russian military, U.S. officials say.
Iran has primarily used cargo planes to ship weapons to Russia, according to U.S. officials, making it all but impossible to intervene. And taking action in the Caspian Sea would require help from former Soviet republics on its coastline.
As the United States is effectively at are at war with both nations, a blockade is legally an act of war, and any of the former Soviet republics taking actions against Russia and Iran would carry enormous costs.
If either Armenia nor Azerbaijan would support the sanctions it risks Russia taking the other side in their long running conflict, while Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan would face major economic issues if the borders to Russia and Iran were closed.
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Officials in the Middle East said the most recent weapons shipment known to have crossed the Caspian Sea to Russia left Iran in early March aboard the Rasul Gamzatov, a 460-foot-long Russian cargo ship named after a writer famous for a poem lamenting the death of Soviet soldiers in World War II.
The ship carried 1,000 containers with 2,000 artillery shells, the officials said, a previously unreported shipment. Some other Iran-to-Russia shipments were previously reported by Sky News.
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One contract from September 2022, viewed by Journal, showed a deal between Iran’s Defense Ministry and Russia’s JSC Rosoboronexport for more than 74,000 artillery shells to be sold to Russia for $1.7 million.
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The Biden administration has warned that the deepening ties between the two nations pose a threat beyond Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO view Russia’s war in Ukraine as a threat to global security, especially to nations in the military alliance on Russia’s western borders. Russia’s use of Iranian drones to hit Ukraine’s Kyiv, a European capital, has heightened the concern in Western capitals.
Russia and Iran have had active diplomatic relations for centuries, and they have a common enemy in the US, so cooperation was more than just foreseeable, it was inevitable.
The ineptitude of the US foreign policy establishment continues unabated.
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