The United States has said that facilitating crew replenishment to sanctioned vessels “risks exposure to U.S. sanctions”, responding to a question about Sri Lanka’s decision to bring 40 Iranian crew members ashore and repatriate them under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
A State Department spokesman told the Daily Mirror in an emailed response that providing fuel, provisions, maintenance services, or facilitating crew replenishment to sanctioned vessels risks that exposure, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.
“The United States will continue to disrupt, expose, and dismantle Iranian military and proliferation activities, the procurement schemes, malicious cyber operations, and illicit oil trade that sustain the regime’s malign behaviour,” the spokesman said. “We call on the international community to join us in holding these actors to account.”
What Sri Lanka did
The Foreign Ministry responded to a distress call from Iranian vessels stranded in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone but outside its territorial waters, where 40 sailors required medical treatment. The operation was planned by the Iranian Embassy in Colombo. The sailors taken ashore were later flown home to Iran.
Around 20 Iranian vessels are under US sanctions, according to the report. Sri Lanka maintains that it adheres to a neutral foreign policy.
LankaNewz reported the evacuation as it happened in late October: the Navy deployed two craft to bring sick crew from tankers anchored off Galle into port, the first time the Foreign Ministry had intervened to move people off those ships.
Why this is a sharpening, not a new position
The American warning itself is not new. US authorities had already issued a global warning against supplying these vessels with food, water, medicine or other services, and Sri Lankan service providers stopped resupplying them rather than risk secondary sanctions.
What has changed is that Washington has now been asked directly about a humanitarian operation Colombo justified in law, and has answered that crew replenishment falls within the conduct it treats as risky. Iranian Ambassador Dr Alireza Delkhosh had argued Sri Lanka could not refuse the vessels’ needs, citing Article 98 of UNCLOS alongside the SOLAS and SAR conventions; Iran had also asked India to intervene over the Indian and Bangladeshi nationals among the crews.
What is unresolved
The spokesman’s statement is a general description of what risks exposure. It does not say that Sri Lanka has incurred sanctions, that any specific Sri Lankan entity is under review, or whether Washington accepts that a medical evacuation is distinguishable from replenishment. The report does not carry a Sri Lankan government response to the remarks, and does not say whether the tankers remain anchored off the south coast or how many crew are still aboard.
This is a single-source report resting on a response given directly to the Daily Mirror; no other newsroom held the statement at the time of writing.
