Ira­nian shadow fleet fuels Myan­mar junta’s expand­ing air cam­paign against civil­ians

LONDON (Reu­ters) – The first bomb to strike the remote west­ern Myan­mar vil­lage of Vanha came from a junta war­plane. It hit the only school in the ham­let, near the front­line of Myan­mar’s civil war. The second came from a drone minutes later.

On that day, Octo­ber 13, 2025, an Ira­nian tanker was headed home from Myan­mar, where it had recently unloaded more than 16,000 tons of jet fuel under a cloak of elec­tronic scram­bling – enough for thou­sands more fighter jet sorties.

Illi­cit Ira­nian deliv­er­ies of jet fuel have powered an expans­ive bomb­ing cam­paign by the Myan­mar junta that has struck more than 1,000 civil­ian loc­a­tions in 15 months, a Reu­ters invest­ig­a­tion has found. Iran has also dis­patched car­goes of urea, a key ingredi­ent in the junta’s muni­tions, includ­ing the bombs it drops from drones and paragliders.

Taken together, the Ira­nian deliv­er­ies to Myan­mar’s mil­it­ary have helped shift the dynamic of the five-year civil war, which pits the junta against an array of rebel groups, none of which have a con­ven­tional air force or a ready sup­ply of weapons as power­ful as the bombs and mis­siles launched by fighter jets. And for Iran’s embattled gov­ern­ment, the trade has brought in new rev­enue and influ­ence, as sanc­tions tighten and old allies lose power.

By the time the war­plane swooped over Vanha and bombed the school, Myan­mar’s air force had already received huge quant­it­ies of Ira­nian jet fuel. Two stu­dents died that day and 22 people were wounded, accord­ing to one of the wounded, a man who was in the school­yard, and Chin Human Rights Organ­iz­a­tion, which doc­u­ments junta attacks in the region.

Most of the chil­dren were out­side clean­ing up the yard at the time, the wounded man said, or the toll would have been far worse. Vanha’s dead were among at least 1,728 civil­ians killed in gov­ern­ment air­strikes since the Ira­nian deliv­er­ies began, accord­ing to data com­piled by Burma News Inter­na­tional-Myan­mar Peace Mon­itor, which tracks the con­flict.

From Octo­ber 2024 to Decem­ber 2025, Iran delivered a total of about 175,000 tons of jet fuel to the junta in nine ship­ments from Reef and a lar­ger sis­ter ship, Noble, accord­ing to ship­ping doc­u­ments reviewed by Reu­ters, and satel­lite imagery and ana­lysis by the US firm Syn­Max Intel­li­gence.

The doc­u­ments and other ship­ping data show the two ships sail­ing out of Iran have been Myan­mar’s primary sup­pli­ers of jet fuel since the deliv­er­ies began. The surge in Ira­nian imports also includes hun­dreds of thou­sands of tons of urea. The pet­ro­chem­ical product is typ­ic­ally a fer­til­izer ingredi­ent, but Myan­mar’s junta also uses it in muni­tions, accord­ing to two sol­diers who defec­ted from the mil­it­ary.

Although the intensi­fy­ing air cam­paign has been widely doc­u­mented, Iran’s cent­ral role in fuel­ing it and sup­ply­ing urea has not been pre­vi­ously repor­ted.

The deliv­er­ies, which are cir­cum­vent­ing West­ern sanc­tions on both Iran and Myan­mar, are a badly needed crutch for their troubled repress­ive gov­ern­ments.

The United Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Human Rights in Myan­mar, respond­ing to find­ings about the Ira­nian ship­ments to Myan­mar, called for the Ira­nian gov­ern­ment to be held account­able for the actions of its new cus­tomer.

“This fuel that is being shipped in from Iran is lit­er­ally fuel­ing mass atro­cit­ies,” Tom Andrews said. “There has been an escal­a­tion in attacks on civil­ian tar­gets. It’s just hor­rific and unac­cept­able. It’s import­ant to point out those that are enabling it.”

Iran’s UN mis­sion declined to com­ment, and Myan­mar’s gov­ern­ment did not respond. Report­ers were unable to reach the own­ers of Reef and Noble; an email lis­ted as a con­tact was not valid.

IRAN’S THEOCRACY, reel­ing from US and Israeli mil­it­ary attacks and the col­lapse of its cur­rency, has just crushed anti-gov­ern­ment protests that posed one of the greatest threats to the Islamic Repub­lic since 1979. It is des­per­ate for money, after years of sanc­tions.

Myan­mar’s mil­it­ary dic­tat­or­ship is also try­ing to quell a rebel­lion that erup­ted after the junta staged a coup in 2021. The fuel has helped at a crit­ical moment. Its 100 or so war­planes, includ­ing Chinese-designed JF-17s, Rus­sian MiG-29s and Suk­hoi-30s, are fly­ing far more bomb­ing raids since the fuel trade boomed. Myan­mar’s rebels are increas­ingly strug­gling to keep con­trol of ter­rit­ory in the face of the junta’s dom­in­ance of the skies.

Reef and Noble, both sanc­tioned by the United States in 2024, star­ted mak­ing the roughly 5,500-kilo­meter voy­ages from Iran to Myan­mar in Octo­ber of that year, falsi­fy­ing their jour­neys using a tech­nique called spoof­ing that is com­mon among cargo ships and tankers mak­ing illi­cit deliv­er­ies.

Since that first deliv­ery until Decem­ber 31, Myan­mar’s mil­it­ary car­ried out 1,022 air­strikes on civil­ian tar­gets, more than double the num­ber from the pre­vi­ous 15-month period, accord­ing to Myan­mar Peace Mon­itor data. Reu­ters has not been able to inde­pend­ently con­firm the num­ber of air­strikes or civil­ian cas­u­al­ties.

Vanha’s approx­im­ately 260 res­id­ents live within a roughly 500-meter radius of the school, and when the air­strike hit, the shock wave rippled through their homes. Video veri­fied by Reu­ters shows people flee­ing when the second explo­sion rings out from the drone.

The vil­lage, ringed by for­es­ted moun­tains, is in Chin state, an impov­er­ished west­ern province bor­der­ing India, where the junta is attempt­ing to claw back ter­rit­ory from rebels. Before the year was done, mil­it­ary jets bombed two other schools within 70 kilo­met­ers of Vanha, accord­ing to the Chin Human Rights Organ­iz­a­tion.

Most of Vanha’s vil­la­gers are now so scared of another air­strike that they sleep in the sur­round­ing jungle and emerge from the tree can­opy to return home only when neces­sary, said the man wounded that day. “Why are they attack­ing inno­cent civil­ians and young chil­dren?” he asked.

Reu­ters could not con­firm whether the war­plane that struck Vanha was fly­ing on Ira­nian jet fuel. However, it had been more than a year since the fuel had come from any­where else, the doc­u­ments and ship­ping data show.

The move­ment of the Ira­nian ships was tracked using satel­lite images and ana­lysis provided by Syn­Max. The data cor­rob­or­ated details lis­ted in the ship­ping doc­u­ments, which con­tained the ves­sels’ names, cargo, port calls, and arrival and depar­ture dates.

People and com­pan­ies con­nec­ted to the ter­minal where Reef and Noble off-loaded their liquid cargo, near Myan­mar’s com­mer­cial cap­ital of Yan­gon, have been sanc­tioned by the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Bri­tain for sup­ply­ing jet fuel to the mil­it­ary.

An ana­lyst who tracks Ira­nian ship­ping also con­firmed some jet fuel deliv­er­ies. Some of Reef’s and Noble’s vis­its to the ter­minal were fur­ther con­firmed by Myan­mar Wit­ness, a project of the Cen­ter for Inform­a­tion Resi­li­ence, an organ­iz­a­tion focused on expos­ing human rights viol­a­tions.

Pub­licly avail­able ship-track­ing data and Myan­mar Port Author­ity records also con­firmed addi­tional inform­a­tion in the doc­u­ments, includ­ing the deliv­er­ies of urea.

Iran’s export surge to Myan­mar fol­lows a series of pun­it­ive West­ern export bans on mater­i­als that could be used by the junta to repress civil­ians. Those eco­nomic sanc­tions raised the risks for com­mer­cial fuel sup­pli­ers and dis­trib­ut­ors to sell to Myan­mar, prompt­ing most to exit the coun­try.

In a response to ques­tions about Iran’s role in sup­ply­ing Myan­mar’s mil­it­ary, the US Treas­ury Depart­ment said Iran’s quest for new mar­kets was a sign that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s eco­nomic pres­sure had been suc­cess­ful. “The regime’s oil profits are being choked,” an offi­cial said.

The for­eign affairs offices of the EU and Canada declined to com­ment. Bri­tain’s For­eign Office noted that it had more than 550 sanc­tions imposed on Iran over its nuc­lear pro­gram and human rights viol­a­tions, includ­ing the Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) and 25 indi­vidu­als and 39 entit­ies in Myan­mar since the coup.

“The UK con­demns human rights viol­a­tions by the Myan­mar mil­it­ary, includ­ing air­strikes on civil­ian infra­struc­ture,” the For­eign Office spokes­man said.

Iran has a long his­tory of mil­it­ary sup­port for allies, includ­ing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbol­lah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and former pres­id­ent Nic­olas Maduro in Venezuela. The sales to Myan­mar are part of a broader strategy of extend­ing its influ­ence by deep­en­ing ties with other isol­ated gov­ern­ments – espe­cially after the fall of older allies since the end of 2024, accord­ing to ana­lysts. Assad and Maduro are now out of power, and Hezbol­lah and Hamas are strug­gling to recover from mil­it­ary defeats by Israel.

The sales also replen­ish state cof­fers depleted by the sanc­tions and Iran’s con­flict with Israel. Jet fuel com­mands a 33% premium com­pared to Brent crude, mean­ing Iran could have earned about $123 mil­lion for those nine ship­ments of jet fuel at cur­rent mar­ket prices, accord­ing to estim­ates based on Inter­na­tional Air Trans­port Asso­ci­ation data.

ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2025, Reef’s loc­a­tion trans­mit­ter pinged off the south­ern coast of Iraq near the Bas­rah Oil Ter­minal.

Satel­lite imagery of the area at the time, however, shows no sign of the ves­sel. Reef was actu­ally at the Ira­nian port of Bandar Abbas, load­ing fuel 8 kilo­met­ers away from a refinery that pro­duces jet fuel and is over­seen by the National Ira­nian Oil Refin­ing and Dis­tri­bu­tion Com­pany, known as NIORDC, Syn­Max satel­lite imagery shows.

At times, dur­ing load­ing, Reef’s cover slipped and the loc­a­tion trans­mit­ter gave away its accur­ate pos­i­tion, before revert­ing to the fake loc­a­tion, Syn­Max data show.

US and EU sanc­tions doc­u­ments show NIORDC is a sub­si­di­ary of the National Ira­nian Oil Com­pany, which con­trols Iran’s pet­ro­leum exports and gen­er­ates huge amounts of money for the IRGC.

The US Office of For­eign Assets Con­trol, the arm of the Treas­ury Depart­ment in charge of sanc­tions, iden­ti­fied the National Ira­nian Oil Com­pany as an “agent or affil­i­ate” of the IRGC in 2012.

Reef is part of Iran’s shadow fleet – a net­work of ves­sels used to secretly trans­port illi­cit cargo. The Ira­nian fleet ships $50 bil­lion worth of oil each year to cus­tom­ers abroad, by far its largest source of for­eign cur­rency and its prin­cipal con­nec­tion to the global eco­nomy, Reu­ters repor­ted in 2024.

The IRGC, with con­trol over both the coun­try’s illi­cit eco­nomy and its internal secur­ity, dom­in­ates the fuel-smug­gling net­works and other busi­ness interests that have been a life­line for Iran’s elite. But the organ­iz­a­tion has pro­voked pop­u­lar back­lash with its viol­ent sup­pres­sion of dis­sent, cor­rup­tion and strangle­hold over the eco­nomy, accord­ing to ana­lysts and sanc­tions experts.

Reef and Noble and their owner, Sea Route Ship Man­age­ment FZE, were sanc­tioned by the US in 2024 for “know­ingly” trans­port­ing Ira­nian pet­ro­chem­ical products. Reef has changed its name and flag of regis­tra­tion three times in as many years – a com­mon tac­tic in the shadow fleet.

Reef and Noble docked at the Myan Oil Ter­minal, a facil­ity on the out­skirts of Yan­gon pre­vi­ously known as Puma, Syn­Max imagery showed. In an archived web­site, a former cor­por­ate owner said it handled 100% of Myan­mar’s mar­ket for jet fuel, which spoils eas­ily and requires spe­cial­ized stor­age and trans­port.

West­ern gov­ern­ments have des­ig­nated the net­work of com­pan­ies con­nec­ted to the facil­ity – includ­ing Myan Oil, Swan Energy, Shoon Energy, and Asia Sun Group – as key part­ners of the junta in import­ing, stor­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing jet fuel. Those firms and two asso­ci­ated indi­vidu­als, Zaw Min Tun and Win Kyaw Kyaw Aung, were sanc­tioned for sup­ply­ing the fuel to the mil­it­ary.

Neither Myan Oil nor the net­work of com­pan­ies and people con­nec­ted to the ter­minal respon­ded to requests for com­ment. In many cases, email addresses for them that were lis­ted in the sanc­tions notices were invalid.

THE SHIFT toward Ira­nian sup­plies under­scores a broader realign­ment in rela­tions between Iran and Myan­mar’s mil­it­ary, known as the Tatmadaw.

In 2017, Ira­nian pres­id­ent Has­san Rouh­ani strongly cri­ti­cized the Tatmadaw, after it mas­sacred thou­sands of Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minor­ity. As waves of Rohingya civil­ians fled to Bangladesh fol­low­ing the mil­it­ary offens­ive, Rouh­ani’s admin­is­tra­tion urged Islamic nations to help end the crisis.

“The inter­na­tional com­munity has no excuse to allow the gen­o­cide of Rohingya Muslims to con­tinue in front of our eyes,” Ira­nian for­eign min­is­ter Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Septem­ber.

But after the Tatmadaw ous­ted the civil­ian gov­ern­ment led by Nobel Peace Prize win­ner Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, there was a rap­proche­ment. In Janu­ary 2022, an Ira­nian gov­ern­ment del­eg­a­tion secretly vis­ited Myan­mar to meet with mem­bers of the mil­it­ary, accord­ing to a regional secur­ity source who closely tracks the junta. The visit was first repor­ted by Asia Times.

They were there to sell Ira­nian weapons, includ­ing guided mis­siles and other mil­it­ary equip­ment, said the secur­ity source, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonym­ity. The source described the visit as a sign that Iran had decided in favor of mil­it­ary sup­port for the junta, while also expand­ing its arms-export mar­ket.

“When push comes to shove, they can make the neces­sary adjust­ments,” said Danny Cit­rinow­icz, a former Israeli intel­li­gence officer and now senior Iran researcher at the Insti­tute for National Secur­ity Stud­ies think tank, refer­ring to Iran’s pivot to Myan­mar. “You can flex the ideo­logy where it’s a stra­tegic interest. And def­in­itely Myan­mar is a coun­try that’s inter­est­ing to them.”

In addi­tion to increas­ing jet fuel deliv­er­ies, Iran has over the past three years become a primary source of Myan­mar’s urea, which the junta has used to man­u­fac­ture explos­ives. Three trade ana­lysts who track the imports closely said Iran’s sup­plies have increased drastic­ally. The annual volume of such Ira­nian imports into Myan­mar could be in the range of 400,000 and 600,000 tons, accord­ing to two of them.

At least two ves­sels that trans­port bulk car­goes, Golden ES and Rasha, delivered urea from Iran to Myan­mar last year, port author­ity data and satel­lite imagery show. As with Reef and Noble, Golden ES and Rasha manip­u­lated their onboard loc­a­tion trans­mit­ters to dis­guise their depar­ture point, accord­ing to Syn­Max. The quant­it­ies of urea described by the ana­lysts would entail mul­tiple deliv­er­ies, but Reu­ters was unable to con­firm other ship­ments.

The own­ers of Golden ES and Rasha did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Major Naung Yoe, a sol­dier who said he defec­ted from the mil­it­ary in 2021 to avoid killing civil­ians and joined the rebel­lion, said urea ends up in two ord­nance factor­ies in cent­ral Myan­mar, where it can be integ­rated into mul­tiple kinds of explos­ives, includ­ing bombs dropped from drones and paragliders. Another defec­ted sol­dier con­firmed the urea-based muni­tions.

Deep­en­ing com­mer­cial ties have been accom­pan­ied by recent high-level polit­ical engage­ment between Myan­mar and Iran.

In Decem­ber 2025, Ira­nian Pres­id­ent Masoud Pezeshkian sat across from Myan­mar’s Prime Min­is­ter Nyo Saw on the side­lines of a sum­mit in Turk­menistan. An Ira­nian readout of the meet­ing said Nyo Saw emphas­ized the desire to expand cooper­a­tion in oil imports and extrac­tion tech­no­logy.

Iran was also invited to send mon­it­ors to observe Myan­mar’s phased gen­eral elec­tion that star­ted on Decem­ber 28, 2025. It was a vote that the oppos­i­tion, the UN, and many inter­na­tional observ­ers described as neither free nor fair. Myan­mar’s junta has said the elec­tion was suc­cess­ful and broadly pop­u­lar.

AS THE elec­tion approached, the Tatmadaw con­tin­ued its aer­ial bom­bard­ment of civil­ian areas.

Wai Hun Aung, an aid worker, was at home late on Decem­ber 10 when he heard a plane fly­ing over­head. Moments later, a massive explo­sion shook his house in Mrauk-U town in Rakhine state, a coastal province bor­der­ing Bangladesh where the mil­it­ary has been locked in fierce fight­ing with the Arakan Army rebel group.

“I was ter­ri­fied. I knew instantly that we were being tar­geted by an air­strike,” Wai Hun Aung said.

It was not until dawn, when he reached the town’s main hos­pital on his motor­bike, that the aid worker grasped the scale of destruc­tion.

Rel­at­ives of patients swarmed the wreck­age of the hos­pital, look­ing for sur­viv­ors, he said. At least 30 people were killed and more than 70 wounded, accord­ing to Reu­ters report­ing. It was among the dead­li­est aer­ial attacks of the civil war.

Only days earlier, Reef had made another cov­ert deliv­ery to Myan­mar, unload­ing nearly 15,000 met­ric tons of jet fuel, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments and satel­lite images. As on pre­vi­ous trips, the crew spoofed its loc­a­tion to falsely show it was sail­ing from Iraq’s Bas­rah Oil Ter­minal to Chit­tagong in Bangladesh.

A port author­ity offi­cial in Chit­tagong said he wasn’t aware of the spoof­ing oper­a­tion. Iraq’s gov­ern­ment did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Pick­ing his way through the rubble that morn­ing, Wai Hun Aung said he found bod­ies and severed limbs scattered across what had been wards and oper­at­ing theat­ers in a 300-bed hos­pital.

“It felt like the end of the world,” he said in a series of audio mes­sages, “the sound of cry­ing from out­side and the sight of the bod­ies inside.”

The hos­pital in Mrauk-U lies in ruins, but the tankers that enabled the destruc­tion keep mov­ing. In late Janu­ary, as the Ira­nian protests were crushed, Syn­Max data showed Noble again pre­tend­ing to be anchored off the south­ern tip of Iraq. In real­ity, the ship was loiter­ing near the Ira­nian port of Bandar Abbas, wait­ing to set sail. was loaded and on its way back toward Yan­gon.