Iran's shadow fleet is fueling the Myanmar junta's air war
Iran has secretly shipped vast amounts of jet fuel to Myanmar's military. As the junta ramps up bombing raids against civilian targets, Iran is now the military's primary supplier of jet fuel and urea, which is an ingredient in Myanmar's munitions. The deliveries violate Western sanctions on both countries.
On September 15, 2025, the location transmitter of an Iranian oil tanker called Reef pinged near Iraq's offshore Basrah Oil Terminal.
Reef was actually several hundred kilometers away at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, loading jet fuel.
Most commercial vessels are required to broadcast their positions using the Automatic Identification System, which allows them to be monitored. This is the shipping path that Reef broadcast from September 15-16, provided by SynMax Intelligence.
At 7:28 a.m. on September 16, Reef's AIS showed the vessel was about 330 kilometers from Bandar Abbas. Just 3 minutes later, the signal showed Reef's arrival at the port – a journey that would normally take at least 10 hours for a ship, even travelling quickly.
After loading in Iran, Reef sailed through the Strait of Hormuz. Soon after this point, it resumed accurately reporting its location.
Some time after rounding the southern tip of India, the ship began spoofing again.
On October 2, Reef's faked location signal showed it heading toward the Bangladeshi port of Chittagong. But later that day, the vessel pinged its real location around 800 kilometers away, at the Myan Oil Terminal near Yangon.
On October 13, a Myanmar warplane bombed a school building in the village of Vanha, killing two students and injuring 22 other people.