🏴‍☠️ The United States Is Running a Pirate Operation on the High Seas – Snatching Ships and Looting Their Cargo

I was banned for defending Yemen stopping weapons to Gaza while Trump steals oil and cargo from Iran and Venezuela with a Navy escort

The United States is acting like pirates on the high seas — seizing giant oil tankers in international waters, dragging them into Texas ports, and boarding ships between China and Iran to strip out cargo it doesn’t like. An American president is bragging about the “largest tanker ever seized” while special operations teams rappel onto decks near Sri Lanka to confiscate equipment destined for Iran. I was given a lifetime ban on Instagram for saying Yemen was right to stop ships of weapons fueling the genocide in Gaza — but what Washington is doing right now is far more extreme, and it’s being cheered. It’s illegal and it’s outrageous.

Before I break this down, I want to ask you from the heart to become a member today. I keep this reporting free for the world — for readers in Gaza, in Sudan, in refugee camps, in prisons, in public schools, for families living in deep poverty who will never be able to pay for it. That only works because a smaller circle of people who can afford it decide to carry some of the cost. If that’s you, I’m asking you to click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member today. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

Now let me show you what the United States is doing in our name.

---

The Tanker Off Venezuela: “Blatant Theft”

NBC News reporters Gordon Lubold, Monica Alba, Courtney Kube, Michael Kosnar, Dan De Luce and their colleagues just revealed that the Trump administration ordered U.S. forces to seize a massive oil tanker called the Skipper in international waters near Venezuela.

According to their reporting, the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy boarded the Skipper on Wednesday at Donald Trump’s direction. They took control of it out on the open sea and began sailing it toward Galveston, Texas. The plan, as described by White House officials, is to hold the ship, seize the oil after a “legal process,” and then release the crew after questioning them and offering to help them travel home. In other words, the United States intends to keep the cargo and send the sailors on their way.

When NBC asked the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for the legal paperwork, they got a brick wall. The search warrant and the affidavit authorizing the seizure are sealed in federal court. A judge signed the warrant weeks ago, but there is no timetable to unseal it. The administration is essentially saying, “Trust us, it’s legal,” while hiding the very documents that would allow the public to judge that claim.

The White House says the Skipper — which the Treasury Department previously identified under a different name — is part of a sanctions-evading network moving oil on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. Whether every detail of that allegation is true or not, the fact remains that the U.S. government just seized a foreign-owned tanker in international waters, took possession of its oil, and is towing the whole thing to Texas.

Venezuela’s foreign minister, Yván Gil Pinto, called the seizure exactly what it looks like from his side. He described it as “blatant theft” and said the real motive behind the long campaign against Venezuela has “always been about our natural wealth, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people,” not migration, not drug trafficking, not democracy, not human rights. NBC printed that quote. They could not pretend they hadn’t heard it.

This operation is happening alongside one of the biggest U.S. military buildups in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trump’s Pentagon has deployed around 15,000 troops, a dozen ships including the Gerald R. Ford, more than ten F-35s in Puerto Rico, and a team of special forces. The administration claims the U.S. military has already struck more than twenty vessels it labels “drug-smuggling boats,” killing over eighty people, but has not provided public evidence to back those claims. NBC’s own reporting notes that more than ninety percent of the drugs coming from Venezuela are headed to Europe, not to the United States, even as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified that this campaign is about stopping deadly drugs from “flooding our country” and killing “our next generation of Americans.”

Then Trump himself, in the Oval Office, was asked whether this push is about drugs or whether oil is now openly part of the equation. He said it is “about a lot of things.” He complained that Venezuela has “treated us badly,” and added, “I guess now we’re not treating them so good.” That is the real doctrine. Not self-defense, not some clear legal principle, but a raw statement of power: they treated us badly, now we will treat them badly.

If Iran seized an American tanker in the Gulf of Mexico, towed it to an Iranian port, and kept the oil while sending the crew home, we would call it piracy and talk about war. When the United States does it, we get glossy video of helicopters hovering over the deck and anchors calling it “a successful operation.”

---

The Ship Off Sri Lanka: Policing China and Iran

Around the same time, Benedict Smith of The Telegraph reported that a U.S. special operations team boarded another ship off the coast of Sri Lanka and seized a shipment of military and dual-use equipment heading from China to Iran.

U.S. officials told the paper that the cargo included precision devices such as spectrometers and gyroscopes — the kind of high-end measurement equipment that can improve the accuracy of missiles. Intelligence suggested the shipment was bound for Iranian companies that specialize in acquiring parts for Tehran’s ballistic missile programme. The point of the operation, they said, was to prevent Iran from rebuilding its missile arsenal after the 12-day war with Israel in June, when Iran fired around five hundred missiles at Israel and had roughly a thousand more destroyed in Israeli strikes.

This interdiction fits into a broader pattern. In January 2024, U.S. Central Command intercepted ballistic and cruise missile components made in Iran and bound for Yemen’s Houthi rebels off the coast of Somalia. The United States has seized Iranian oil shipments in 2020 and 2023, claiming the proceeds would fund the Revolutionary Guard. The Treasury Department has sanctioned dozens of companies and networks around the world that it says have been used to procure supplies for Iran’s missile and drone programs.

All of that is wrapped in the language of sanctions and nonproliferation, but step back and look at what is physically happening. U.S. commandos are boarding foreign ships on the high seas, confiscating cargo being traded between China and Iran, and telling the world that Washington will decide which countries are allowed to rebuild their military capacity and which must stay weak. This is not a neutral referee applying common rules. It is an empire enforcing its own red lines with a gun in its hand.

---

Yemen Gets Bombed for Doing a Fraction of This

I need you to hold these images next to each other.

On one side, Yemen — one of the poorest, most bombed nations on the planet — starts targeting and intercepting ships linked to Israel or carrying supplies to the genocide in Gaza. Their goal is to put pressure on the Israeli government and the governments arming it by making it harder to ship weapons and related goods. Western media brands them terrorists. The U.S. and its allies respond with airstrikes on Yemen, claiming its actions threaten global trade.

All I said on Instagram was that Yemen was right to try to stop ships of weapons fueling the genocide. I did not call for attacks on civilians. I did not celebrate violence for its own sake. I said they were right to interrupt the flow of weapons that were destroying Palestinian families. For that, I was banned for life from the platform.

On the other side, the United States is seizing tankers in international waters, towing them into Texas, and keeping the oil. It is boarding ships off Sri Lanka, confiscating cargo going from China to Iran. It is blowing up boats it labels “drug-smuggling vessels” and building a war-sized military presence around Venezuela. And we are told to see these actions as responsible, lawful, and necessary.

When Yemen does a fraction of this to try to slow down a genocide, it is condemned and bombed. When the United States does far more, thousands of miles from its own shores, it gets positive coverage and applause.

If that double standard doesn’t make your head spin, you’re not paying attention.

---

Iran and Venezuela Are Not Coming to Your Neighborhood

Let me be clear: Iran and Venezuela are not about to invade your neighborhood. They are not going to roll tanks into your city. They are not going to occupy your block. They are heavily sanctioned, heavily surveilled, and constantly under pressure.

These governments are not beyond criticism. They have their own abuses and their own injustices. But that’s not why U.S. ships are parked off their coasts and why U.S. special operations teams are boarding vessels headed their way.

Iran is a threat to something very specific: Israel’s ability to carry out attacks without fear of meaningful retaliation. A rebuilt Iranian missile arsenal is not a threat to your dinner table; it is a deterrent to an Israeli government that wants to keep its hands free even as it stands accused of genocide in Gaza.

Venezuela is a threat of a different kind: it challenges U.S. and Western dominance over oil and other natural resources in Latin America. That is why Yván Gil said this struggle has always been about Venezuela’s natural wealth, not migration, not drugs, not democracy, not human rights. He is saying out loud what many governments in the global South quietly know: that “concern” about democracy and drugs is often a costume for old-fashioned resource control.

When you peel away the slogans, you see the underlying project. The United States is using its unmatched military power to decide which countries get to have energy, which get to have missiles, which can trade freely, and which are allowed to recover after war. It is not primarily about defending you. It is about maintaining a hierarchy where Washington and its allies sit on top.

---

This Is State Piracy, Whatever Legal Word You Put on It

International lawyers will rush in to say this is not piracy in the technical sense, because the definition of piracy focuses on private actors pursuing private ends. They will say this is “sanctions enforcement,” that it is backed by court orders and Security Council resolutions. But if you look at it morally and practically, you see something very simple.

A powerful state is seizing ships and cargo that do not belong to it, far from its own shores, because it knows nobody stronger will stop it. It is taking oil, taking components, taking whatever it wants and daring the rest of the world to object.

When you seize a tanker in international waters and tow it to Texas, keeping the oil and letting the crew go, you are admitting that the oil was the prize all along. The sailors were just the people standing next to the prize.

When you board a ship between China and Iran and strip out its cargo off Sri Lanka, you are not protecting kids in Georgia from missiles. You are flexing that you own the trade routes, that your government reserves the right to choke off other countries whenever it pleases.

Imagine, just for a second, that this were reversed. Picture Iranian or Chinese special forces boarding an American-flagged ship in the middle of the Atlantic, seizing what they declare to be “sanctioned cargo,” and escorting it to their own ports. Picture them telling you it is all about global security, that the seizure went through a secret legal process, and you should just trust them.

Would you accept that? Or would you call it piracy, aggression, and an outrage?

We all know the answer. We just pretend not to when the pirate flag happens to be ours.

I will not pretend. I will not call this justice. And I will not be quiet about it just because they can ban me or shadow-ban me or throttle my reach. I see what they are doing. And I see how quickly people who defend resistance from countries like Yemen are silenced while outright theft and intimidation from Washington is normalized.

---

Family, if this helped you see the pattern more clearly — if it gave you words for the next time somebody tells you America is just “keeping the seas safe” — I’m asking you to stand with me so we can keep doing this work.

I want every one of these pieces to remain free for the world, especially for the people who are living under the boot of the policies I’m describing. But that only works if some of you decide that independent, fearless journalism is something you will support. If you’re able, please click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member right now.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

Don’t Stop Here

If you want a clearer picture of how deep this hypocrisy runs, go read my reporting on how Britain and the United States tried to bully the International Criminal Court when it moved toward issuing warrants for Netanyahu. The same governments that preach “rule of law” were privately threatening the very court they helped create.

Then spend time with the story of Rahaf, the infant who froze to death in a flooded tent in Gaza during a so-called “ceasefire.” Let her life and death sit with you when you hear these same leaders talk about “stability” and “security” while they arm and shield the state that forced her into that tent.

---

Share this piece with at least three people who still believe America is just minding its own business out there. That is how we begin to crack the story they are selling you — one honest conversation at a time.