Iran Feature: How Tehran Evades Sanctions on Its Ships (Armstrong/Grey/Ojha)
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 11:42
Just before noon on a sticky, overcast Saturday morning earlier this month a truck carrying two white containers waited at an electronic checkpoint to leave Singapore's main port. The containers bore the bright red letters IRISL, the initials of Iran's cargo line, which has been blacklisted by the United Nations, United States and European Union.
Anchored just off Singapore's playground island of Sentosa that same day, the container ship Valili was also stacked high with IRISL boxes. A couple of miles to the east the Parmis, another container ship, also carried IRISL crates. Shipping movements data tracked by Reuters shows the Parmis had pulled into Singapore waters from the northern Chinese port of Tianjin early that morning.
The ships and containers are key parts in an international cat-and-mouse game, as Iran attempts to evade the trade sanctions tightening around it.