Erasing The 'Gray Zone': Trump's World-Changing Campaign Against The Shadow Fleet
Maritime supremacy as strategic hedging against global conflict
France seized a ‘shadow fleet’ tanker, the Grinch, in the Atlantic last week. The ship had allegedly been used to evade sanctions on Russian oil. Emmanuel Macron said the ship was “subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag”, and French authorities “confirmed the doubts as to the regularity of the flag” upon boarding. The US Navy has seized seven shadow fleet vessels since 10 December 2025 and the Royal Navy has assisted both partners. Even the Italians have seized a shadow fleet freighter. Additionally, the United States and western partners have sanctioned hundreds of vessels, about one-third of the entire shadow fleet.
For the Europeans, this is about the international order and other fine sentiments. For the Trump administration, however, this is all about closing the ‘gray zone’ that America’s enemies created in order to frustrate American power and circumvent western sanctions. The Trump administration wants to forestall war with China, or failing that, set up conditions for victory. Secondarily, Trump now aims to reduce or remove the regime in Iran, cut off Russia’s lifeline to ready cash, and end the communist regime in Cuba, all in one neat package of global maritime supremacy. It might even work because it is already working. Forget the strategic tensions of yesteryear, for they are all being disrupted, right now. It turns out that we actually can just do things.
Until recently, Venezuela has served as the Atlantic port-of-call for the shadow fleet and the ‘gray zone’ economy created by strategic antagonists to America and Europe. This essay will examine each country affected by that war in turn. First, The Wall Street Journal made this short video a few days ago showing the global traffic pattern of the shadow fleet, and it is worth watching. More than 1,400 vessels operate at the margins of international law on the high seas, often doing ship-to-ship oil transfers without much care for environmental risk. Dark fleet ships are older, more dangerous, pollute more, and frequently use deceptive tactics, such as false transponder signals and re-flagging at sea, to circumvent sanctions. Note how Venezuela has been the Atlantic cornerstone of the gray zone. Premium subscriber content is below the video.
Venezuela
In addition to oil swaps, a key method of avoiding sanctions, Venezuela has provided Iran with gold as an alternative financing vehicle. The Bella1 was renamed the Marinera as it tried to flee the US Navy immediately after the operation. She had left Iran for Venezuela days before with 1.5 tons of gold on board, likely originating from Venezuela’s Arco Minero region, with a value of around $239 million, along with stacks of cash in euros, electronics, and drone parts. The gold had been used in Iran to finance Venezuelan transactions in the gray zone.
The capture of Nicolás Maduro immediately disrupted this sanctions-evading circulatory system. “Of the vessels tracked that were inbound to Venezuela when the crisis erupted in mid-December, at least six are now drifting or waiting at sea, their operators apparently unsure whether to proceed”, Lloyd’s List reported. “Seven others have pivoted to find alternative employment, with at least two redirecting to service Iranian or Russian oil trades instead.” One sanctioned vessel ”executed a U-turn while heading toward Venezuela and sailed directly for the Middle East Gulf, where it has now arrived”, apparently to load sanctioned crude oil. Some ships were paralyzed; Lloyd’s counted “six tankers that appear to be waiting for orders.”
Along with Bella1, three Russian ships dropped their Guyanan flags of convenience and tried renaming themselves: the Malak became the Sintez, the Dianchi became the Expander, and the Veronica became the Galileo. All were seized anyway. Painting over a ship’s name does not work because thermal imaging cameras are still able to see the original letters through the paint. Furthermore, the screw propellers of every ship are unique, like fingerprints, so that US Navy acoustic equipment can identify them wherever they go. Shadow fleet vessels can only walk, they can never run, and they cannot hide at all.
This demonstration of naval power, the ability to chase down lots of ships and seize them at the convenience of the US Navy, is entirely legal according to all the pertinent treaties. It has had the intended effect on Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress yesterday that the administration is pursuing “a mechanism that allows that to be sold in a normal way, a normal oil industry, not one dominated by cronies, graft and corruption.” The Trump administration has made it clear they will use the big stick if necessary to ensure that cooperation, though it does not appear necessary because Delcy Rodríguez appears to be cooperative in the post-Maduro transition, so far.
Part of the emerging negotiated transition seems to involve US basing rights, which would certainly lock down the Caribbean as an American lake again. But bases take time to build, while the disruption to the shadow fleet is having much shorter-term consequences because so many sanctioned states depend on the shadow fleet to deliver their energy. Under Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela became a key supplier to the gray zone oil market. Now Venezuela’s oil will flow through the legitimate global trade system instead. This immediately left some shadow fleet customers in a tough spot.
Cuba
Cuba built an oil-dependent electrical grid in the days of cheap Soviet oil, and rather than replace their antiquated, inefficient grid, chose to keep it puttering along on Venezuelan crude. Blackouts led to strikes and demonstrations last year, causing the regime to crack down on dissidents. The Trump administration is very aware of this total oil dependency and has threatened an oil blockade of the island. Under pressure by the US, Mexico has signaled that they will not make up the shortfall in oil deliveries.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year”, essentially the same strategy used in Venezuela. Cuba has been on outsized strategic antagonist, creating far more trouble than one small island should be allowed. Cut off from the shadow fleet, the regime might only last months or even weeks, now. For while the government has all the guns, and does not fear the people, the US can potentially make it impossible for the island to function.
Iran
At almost the same time Maduro’s Cuban guards were being aced by American special operators, news broke that an Iranian Mohajer-6 UAV had been sighted at Venezuela’s El Libertador Air Base in Maracay. It was the latest manifestation of the budding security relationship between Caracas and Tehran that grew out of their economic ties via the shadow fleet. Hezbollah has operated out of Venezuela for almost a decade. Military assistance is one more form of exchange among the sanctioned countries in this network.
Breaking up the shadow fleet value-barter system immediately disrupted Iran’s smuggling economy, which is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also imposed sanctions on 29 Iranian vessels and their respective management companies in the IRGC shadow fleet on 23 December 2025. Five days later, the resulting volatility of the rial touched off the current protests against the regime, giving explosive vent to pressures built up for many years.
As I write this, the Trump administration seems poised to take direct military action against the IRGC, and because the regime has slaughtered a reported 38,000 people, there will not be a burst of anti-American nationalism in response to even the fiercest strikes on anything IRGC-connected. Regime collapse is not guaranteed, but their hold on power is surely brittle. To succeed, American action must land as much as possible on the one entity in Iran that keeps the regime in place.
Iran is the Middle Eastern cornerstone to the shadow fleet. See, for example, this excellent Reuters reporting that tracks one shadow fleet tanker from Iran to Myanmar, where it delivered jet fuel to be used in airstrikes on the Rohingya minority. If the clerical regime falls, and is followed by a new Iranian government with normalized foreign relations that participates in the transparent global trade and banking networks, the impact will land on every despotic state that uses the shadow fleet.
Russia
The whole point of the shadow fleet was to avoid direct confrontation with the West, so when push came to shove, the Russian Navy blinked. “The Russian ships — it was a submarine and a destroyer — they both left very quickly when we arrived” to board the Bella1, Trump said afterwards. “And we took over the ship and the oil is being unloaded right now.” Vladimir Putin has propagandists who rattle nuclear sabers and talk tough, but he was unwilling to risk World War III over a ship. That his government begged the Americans to let the ship get away, and they didn’t, is a humiliation.
“Busting the ghost fleet will succeed only when backed by accurate intelligence, pressure on neutral shipping services, and pressure on the financial and logistical infrastructure that supports enemy trade”, CSIS reported in mid-December, just before the Trump administration’s shadow fleet blitzkrieg began. “These options provide Ukraine’s foreign backers with a way to challenge Moscow short of direct military confrontation.”
In other words, Putin might be forced to get serious about a peace deal if the shadow fleet is no longer viable for circumventing sanctions. CSIS reports that “revenue from this illicit trade network has matched, if not exceeded, the total value of economic and military assistance provided to Ukraine since the start of the war.” Over the long run of military history, the side that stops paying its soldiers almost always loses. Russia was already facing a war economy crisis and now it is worse, because the supply of ready cash from oil sales is reduced.
It is very unusual for Russia to finance anything with debt. Now financial circumstances are forcing a policy change, as Russian debt doubled in 2025 and the debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to reach 70 percent long before midcentury. The National Welfare Fund (NWF), colloquially known as the ‘rainy day fund’, has run out of liquid assets and defense spending is set to decline in the proposed budget. Whereas ruble inflation once seemed the greater threat to Russia’s war effort, right now it is strong relative to the dollar, with the result that Russia makes less money on every barrel. By way of citation, here is Joe Blogs with the details.
China
Officially, the CCP imports about one-third of China’s oil from Venezuela and Iran. While the Trump administration’s actions so far have not directly impinged on the supply of oil to China — in fact, a few shadow tankers have redirected to their shores, post-Maduro — China imports over a quarter of its oil, about 27 percent, via the shadow fleet, so the real portion from those two countries is likely much higher.
Reining in the shadow fleet and regularizing global energy traffic threatens to dispel China’s offshore gray zone, the region behind the infamous ‘nine-dash line’ at sea, that includes Taiwan. In the event of war, American global maritime energy dominance will matter more than the size of the Chinese navy. The PLAN cannot sail without fuel, and China has to import practically all their energy.
Sean Lin, the executive director at the Consilium Institute and a member of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger: China, specifically cites the capture of Maduro as a triggering event for the reported arrest of Gen. Zhiang Yuxia, formerly Xi Jinping’s right-hand man in charge of the People’s Liberation Army.
Western media is tripping all over itself to explain these events, while as I noted last year, too many diaspora voices are wishcasting when they dive into the esoteric tea leaf-reading of events inside China. Be wary of what you read or hear about what is happening, and why. To explain, here is one of my favorite, because most reliable, China-watchers. This is not a civil war or internal disorder. It is slow, Stalinist collapse.
Rumors of a brewing crisis between Xi and Zhang were rampant in 2025. Now rumors are once again rampant. Charges of corruption are entirely believable, indeed expected, while charges of nuclear treason seem suspicious, to say the least. To their credit, The Wall Street journal did get this quote from CIA China veteran Christopher Johnson:
“Xi sought to avoid a wholesale cashiering of the top brass in the early years of the anticorruption campaign” by not targeting active-duty senior generals and key parts of the military such as the strategic-missile force, Johnson said. “He later realized that was impossible, and this move is the denouement of that process.”
Xi has purged the upper ranks of the military for a long time now. Zhang Shengmin, sole professional survivor of the six-man Central Military Commission, “has served as a political officer and discipline inspector for the bulk of his career, responsible for enforcing loyalty and boosting morale.” Zhang is the last living Chinese combat veteran in command capacity. He has become the fall guy for misfortune, a classic strategic error. As seen in the example of the Ming dynasty’s downfall, there are no buffers left between the leader and failure. The cult of leadership purges competence in order to protect the leader: Stalin, with Chinese characteristics.
The question: “Does this make war more, or less, likely?” is secondary to the question: “If war happens, will China be better-positioned for victory, or worse?” because they are actually the same question. Xi cannot delegate power to attack Taiwan, and without the shadow fleet, cannot sustain a war for the Strait of Taiwan. A rational actor with good information, put in this position, would likely be deterred from attacking. It remains to be seen whether Xi Jinping is that kind of leader.
North Korea
Of all the antagonists listed here, this one is the most dependent on foreign energy, as the Pyongyang regime imports nearly all of its petroleum and much of its coal through the shadow fleet. Actions that reduce the fleet, limit its operations, and force regulatory compliance will definitely affect energy costs in North Korean. Famous for being a black band across the peninsula, contrasting with the brightly-lit urbanized South Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic is Cuba with a Chinese land border.
Perhaps not surprisingly, North Korean ships are also the least cooperative with the US Navy and American regional allies. They are notorious for flying false flags, for example, just one abuse that would be easy to reign in globally. As the Royal United Services Institute has noted, “the embedding of flag registry oversight into the evaluation framework of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international watchdog for anti-money laundering and other forms of financial crime, including proliferation financing (PF, the financing of WMDs)” is a relatively simple fix compared to war with North Korea.
Numerous flag states allow registration with minimal due diligence, failing to verify beneficial ownership or assess the risk of sanctions. This lack of regulation has created a structural loophole: a vessel removed for sanctions violations — or other failings — can simply re-register under another state, often within days. Private registration services, operating with little oversight and often outside the territory of the flag state they represent, further exacerbate the system’s vulnerability.
Enforce sensible laws, rules, and regulations at sea, and the pressure will land on North Korea by default. Inasmuch as we hear about ‘the rule of law’ and ‘the rules-based order’ and so on, there is no law at sea except pure power. This is why navalism exists. America has global command of the blue oceans and the gray zone only ever worked because political will to confront it was lacking. For better or worse, that will is no longer lacking, in Washington, DC.
Nobody likes the shadow fleet
The shadow fleet is already an environmental and regulatory disaster. Because they are never bought brand new, the shadow fleet is full of older, less safe vessels that frequently leak or spill oil, especially during ship-to-ship sanctions-evading transfers, and end up abandoned with increasing frequency. Western governments are cleaning up an increasing number of spills from ships that often lack insurance. Nobody will defend the reputation of the shadow fleet because it is deservedly terrible, often stranding sailors with busted ships.
Like piracy in the golden age of sail, the shadow fleet is an off-the-books arbitrage of seaborne shipping. They are extra ships, sailed by extra men, disposing of extra cargo through extra-legal means. Also like piracy, shutting down this activity simply requires someone willing to enforce the laws at sea. Few real battles are required. In the event of a real, global war, the winner will control the maritime shipping, specifically energy shipping. Faced with an opponent that demonstrates power to control the seas and the political will to do so, rational actors will, hopefully, be deterred from aggression. Or so goes the plan.
I do not know if it will work. It is clearly having an effect, though. A world in which America’s antagonists are afraid to attack is a good world, a more peaceful world. A world in which the US Navy enforces rules to which the world has agreed is much freer, safer, and less violent than a world in which the US Army is told to invade Middle Eastern countries and conduct nation-building exercises. Whatever one thinks about Team Trump, that is not a bad world to live in.