The U.S. is now offering ship captains millions in cash to thwart Iran's oil exports. If that fails, it's threats.

(Image credit: Johnny Bugeja/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 5 September 2019

Eleven days after Gibraltar released a detained Iranian oil tanker in mid-August, over U.S. objections, the ship's Indian captain got an email from a top U.S. State Department official offering him several million dollars to steer the ship to a port where the U.S. could seize it, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The State Department then confirmed the offer and the new strategy to mix offers of cash and threats of sanctions or even jail to thwart Iranian oil shipments. "We have conducted extensive outreach to several ship captains as well as shipping companies," a State Department spokeswoman told AFP.

The ship's captain, Akhilesh Kumar, ignored the Aug. 26 offer of "good news" from Brian Hook, the head of the State Department's Iran Action Group, so Hook tried again. "With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age," he wrote Kumar two days later. "If you choose not to take this easy path, life will be much harder for you." Two days after that, on Friday, the U.S. slapped sanctions on Kumar and the ship, renamed the Adrian Darya 1. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the emails "outright blackmail" after failed "piracy."

Hook told the Financial Times that he has emailed or texted about a dozen captains as part of the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, attempting to scare or bribe them to stop helping Iran sell oil abroad. A U.S. official told the paper the Trump administration has begun offering up to $15 million for information that disrupts Iran's illicit actives, using a 1984 program designed to counter terrorism.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.