Miad Maleki

The U.S. can break the Iranian regime’s ghost fleet and the black market behind it. Not by lifting sanctions wholesale, but by letting U.S.-aligned companies buy the tankers out of Tehran’s black market, recycle them into legitimate trade and put them to work hauling Gulf oil through Hormuz while the blockade keeps Iran’s own cargo bottled up.

That gives anyone who wants out of Iran’s orbit a door: sell the ship to a legitimate operator and it comes off the list. The owners who stay get nothing.

@USTreasury has already shown it works. On Oct. 8 it delisted two ships sold to U.S.-aligned operators the same day it blacklisted 17 more.

My op-ed in today’s @WSJopinion.

I reviewed 110 financial documents and reports of main Iranian land and sea transportation companies along with regional custom data. Here is what @CENTCOM new Task Force Iron Gate — announced today to squeeze Iran’s land borders and the Caspian — is actually up against.

Since April 2026, a U.S. naval blockade has shut Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, ports that handled roughly 163 million tons of cargo and about 80% of Iran’s trade.

But Iran has seven back doors: Iraq, Turkey, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Together they carried about $22 billion in trade in 2024–25 — $15.3B out, $6.8B in. Since the blockade, every one of these corridors shows traffic surging.

That is the gap Iron Gate has to close. A thread with the numbers, corridor by corridor. (1/10)

Fresh action by @USTreasury hits an India-based husband-and-wife ring that impersonated a dozen governments, Dominica to Eswatini to Laos, selling Iran's shadow fleet fake flags.

This was the shadow fleet's single largest fake flag source. In April the U.S. seized tanker MAJESTIC X, flying his fake Guyana flag with Iranian oil aboard.

The same action designates a top Turkish airport ground service provider that kept sanctioned Iranian airlines flying into Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir after other Turkish handlers dropped them. FUGO holds direct service agreements with U.S.-designated airlines. My @FDD colleagues @AhmadA_Sharawi and @SinanCiddi wrote about FUGO in September.

A superb investigative report by @Reuters on the global trustee network that has let the Iranian regime restock its missiles and drones through a war and a naval blockade.

I had the opportunity to review the underlying data. It is one of the clearest pictures yet of the regime's trustee operation, specifically the side that feeds its military.

• More than 5,000 agencies named "MOD" plus a number, and all at the Defense Ministry's Tehran address.
• 97% of shipments reviewed were settled "without currency transfer": trustees abroad pay the supplier from oil money that never touches Iran.
• Phone numbers of 91 agencies match Bank Sepah records of IRGC personnel.

This is the complete ecosystem of the Iranian military's trade business exposed by @GavinFinchRtrs, @MichaelMag65136, @allisonmartell and @delruemarine1

(1/4) A thread on some key elements of this report.
reuters.com/world/iran/ira…

My new @nypost op-ed: The Islamic Republic only survives on war. Don't give the regime what it craves.

I spent years at @USTreasury squeezing this regime and I want it gone. That's exactly why the next round of bombs should stay in the racks.

This regime is built to fight, not to govern. A blackout in wartime is a sacrifice the IRGC can police; in a cease-fire, it's a failure the regime must explain.

Hold the blockade. Make them run the country they broke.