Happens all the time and it's not geopolitics related. It's a domestic issue. Thanks to government subsidies, fuel prices in Iran are extremely low and some take advantage of it and try to smuggle it out of the country.
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You can always tell the difference between a smuggling vessel and a regular tanker by the size of the load. In this case, Iranians
reported over a million liters seized, which may sound impressive but is nothing in the tanker world - a million liters is just 6289 barrels, when even the smallest handysize tankers carry upward of tens of thousands of barrels. To compare, "Stena Imperative" a US flagged tanker, harassed yesterday by the Iranians in the Strait of Hormuz, is a midsize, medium range tanker capable of carrying a quarter million of barrels of oil.
