The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 17 of Iran's so-called shadow-fleet vessels on Oct. 8. The aging network of tankers illicitly transports Iranian crude oil, petroleum and petrochemical products to foreign markets. Less than a week later, the administration was reportedly considering easing sanctions on shadow-fleet vessels and allowing them to carry oil not subject to sanctions in an effort to bring down record high freight rates. Those discussions, a U.S. official told Reuters, include the possibility of lifting sanctions on tankers "on an individual basis" so they can change hands.
A blanket lifting of sanctions would be a retreat, but enabling individual ships to change hands could be a smart strategy. Washington should create incentives for U.S.-aligned operators to buy ships out of Iran's black market and put them to legitimate use in the Strait of Hormuz.
The shadow fleet's Iranian business is disappearing thanks to the U.S. naval blockade. Iran loaded no crude oil onto ships at its export terminals in September, according to ship-tracking firm Kpler. Research group Energy Aspects, in a note to clients, said most tankers subject to sanctions for Russian or Venezuelan links have kept trading these past three months. The Iran-dedicated hulls haven't.
Kpler reports about 160 supertankers under U.S. sanctions, 7 in 10 of them less than 20 years old, but told Reuters that only about two dozen could rejoin mainstream commercial shipping. But the work that most needs to be done isn't mainstream. The most pressing task is to shuttle Gulf crude through the Strait of Hormuz, where war-risk insurance costs 7.5% to 10% of a ship's hull value and renting a supertanker costs as much as $1.3 million a day. At those premiums, an aging hull is the cheapest ship to risk.
Energy Aspects says easing sanctions could make a small number of additional tankers available for Hormuz shuttle runs. The mainstream operators already running the Hormuz shuttle would likely buy operational shadow tankers, if a sale means sanctions relief. The oldest ships could be sold for scrap.
Sanctions on their own rarely prompt owners to quit the trade. Cut off from mainstream banking, insurance and registries, they turn to the customers willing to bear sanctions risk. The same thing happens with oil refineries. After Britain and the European Union imposed sanctions on China's Yulong Petrochemical in October 2025, BP, Saudi Aramco and other suppliers canceled oil shipments to the company. Russian crude rose from 40% to 50% of Yulong's intake to "most if not all," according to Reuters.
In eight years at the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, I learned that offering owners an exit can help enforce sanctions. We delisted ships and companies on a case-by-case basis when they changed hands. But we didn't have a blockade that made the fleet's Iranian business worthless. That lever exists now.
And there's a precedent: At the same time the Treasury imposed sanctions on the 17 shadow-fleet vessels, it removed from the sanctions list two container ships that have been sold to U.S.-aligned operators.
Washington should scale up this model and start recruiting buyers for the fleet: U.S.-aligned operators that would put these hulls to work on the Hormuz run. We should also work with the flag states and registries under which the fleet operates to ensure a change of hands is the only road back to insurance and finance. The oldest hulls could be sold for scrap on the same terms.
Tehran built a black market to get around the sanctions wall. The blockade has starved it. Rather than lowering the wall, Washington should open a gate and let the regime watch its fleet work for someone else.
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Mr. Maleki is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served as a senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department, 2017-25.
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