On a rainy Wednesday, last year in September, a 188-metre-long container ship came to the port of Antwerp. The fourteen-year-old ship named Shiba sails under the flag of Iran. It was given berths in the port of Antwerp in the Churchill Terminal and the ABES terminal of Katoen Natie. All by the book.
But a month earlier, the Shiba showed a very suspicious travel pattern when passing through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The ship departed Iran on 23 July, anchored in the Suez Canal on 9 August and arrived at its destination in Syria on 12 August. Between 2 and 5 August, it floated around seemingly aimlessly in the Gulf of Aden. Western security services had also noticed this, which see no logical, economic explanation for this. Every day of delay costs the shipowner money, so why all the delay?
In the same period, on August 3, the Yemeni Houthi rebels fired a missile at the Greek container ship Groton that was sailing in the Gulf of Aden at the time. To avoid such terror attacks and stay under the radar, Western ships switch off their automatic identification system (AIS) in that area. But the Houthi rebels are getting help from Iran for their attacks. The Iranian ship Shiba is suspected of having signaled the passing Western ship to the Houthis.
In January last year, a similar scenario took place. At that time, the Shiba was also hanging around there when the Houthis fired a missile at the dry bulk carrier Gibraltar Eagle on January 15.
And in March last year, it happened again, after the Shiba had left our country on February 25 and before the ship was back in Iran on March 13. In that interim period, the Shiba once again sailed through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, while the Houthis attacked the Propel Fortune with drones on March 8.
Such hidden Iranian aid to the Houthis is burning topical. In recent weeks, the rebels continued to target American targets, after which US President Donald Trump declared last week that he wants to eradicate the Houthis. Trump called on Iran to immediately stop all support to the rebels.
In addition to the Shiba, five other Iranian ships appear to have used their commercial traffic with the port of Antwerp as a cover for shady practices. The other ships are named Artam, Artenos, Azargoun, Daisy and Kashan. They are all large container ships that are 187 to more than 220 meters long and sail under the flag of Iran.
De Tijd started monitoring the shipping routes of the six suspected Iranian ships in September last year and mapped them on the basis of ship databases. We spoke with those involved in the ports and with security services in various countries. We also collected documents such as inspection reports and received help from fellow journalists from Syria in recent months (SIRAJ), Iran (Zamaneh), Germany (Paper Trail Media), Netherlands (Follow the Money) and the collectiveOCCRP. This research by De Tijd will therefore be published in English, Arabic and Farsi (the official language of Iran).
Weapons for Hezbollah
The shady practices of the Iranian ships do not appear to be limited to espionage for the benefit of the Houthis. According to Western and Israeli security services, they also made arms deliveries on their way to Antwerp at stopovers in Syria and Russia. It would mainly concern transports of parts to make weapons, rather than finished products, as well as of ammunition and dual-use goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. From Syria, the ammunition, weapons and parts would also have been transported to the radical Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Our investigation into the traffic data confirms that the six Iranian ships have been going to Syria alternately and almost every month on their commercial route to Antwerp in recent years. This happened at least 27 times in 28 months (between June 2022 and October last year).
The six Iranian ships almost always followed the same route. That started after a long stay in Iran, often in Bandar Abbas, the country’s largest port controlled by the Iranian regime. From there, the ships set sail via the Suez Canal, usually without a stopover, to the main Syrian seaport in Latakia.
After one to three days in the Syrian port, the Iranian ships sailed on to Antwerp and other European ports in Italy (Ravenna), Spain (Valencia and Bilbao) and Romania (Constanta). The passage in Antwerp was often the last stop on the route and it usually took the longest. Then the ships returned to Iran.
What also makes the sailings suspicious: not all stopovers in Syria can be traced in the international shipping data on port visits and anchorages and berths, which the security services also use. We discovered at least one so-called dark port call, a stopover that has not been officially reported.
Our fellow journalists in Syria obtained confidential documents from the general intelligence service of the now fallen dictator Bashar al-Assad. They contain information about ships that came to Syrian ports between 2021 and 2024, including those from Latakia. Such a document shows that the Shiba visited the port of Latakia in May last year, which is not reflected in the official sailing records about that ship.
And the Iranian ships did not only make suspicious stopovers in Syria. On their way to Antwerp, the Azargoun and Artam also visited the Russian port of Novorossiysk. That happened in January and February 2023, about a year after Russia invaded Ukraine. In addition, the ship Artenos went to Venezuela in February and March 2023, also an alleged buyer of military systems from Iran. The ship also passed through Kenya and Tanzania, where Iran would also supply weapons.
Container numbers
The Belgian security services tried to catch the Iranian ships last year, De Tijd learned. This happened when the 207-metre-long container ship Azargoun entered the port of Antwerp on 30 June last year. Our security services had received exceptionally precise data from the Americans, even with the numbers of the containers in which the arms transports had taken place. But a thorough inspection, including of the crew’s cabins, found nothing at all. Not even remnants or any evidence that there were weapons or weapon parts on board before.
It illustrates how our security services have had to watch with dismay in recent years how the traffic to Antwerp was used for the anti-Western maneuvers of the Iranian regime. The alleged arms deliveries took place each time before the vessels behaved like legitimate merchant ships in European ports. When they came here to pick up goods, they were not even dual-use cargoes. So the ships have never been caught in Antwerp.
The issue was followed up by the Belgian Maritime Information Crossroads (MIK) and discussed with other countries in the North Sea and Channel Maritime Information Group (NSCMIG).
The Iranian ships also passed on information to Iran when they encountered military ships here. For example, the Daisy has already been spotted in Belgian waters when a military exercise with minehunters was underway.
Solemnly welcomed
Things may change. In March 2016, the Azargoun was the very first Iranian ship to be allowed to return to Antwerp after the EU had concluded a nuclear agreement with Iran and the sanctions had been lifted. The Azargoun was solemnly welcomed in the Deurganck dock by an official delegation led by the Antwerp port aldermen, eager to re-establish decades-old ties with Iran. Because until sanctions were introduced in 2010, Antwerp was the most important European destination for cargo from Iran.
Our investigation shows that the Azargoun came to the port of Antwerp seven times in the past three years and stopped six times in the Syrian port of Latakia along the way.
After a stop in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, the Azargoun was subjected to a purely technical inspection here in March 2023 at most. In the process, the inspectors discovered 37 defects, 16 of which were sufficiently heavy to hold the ship until everything was repaired. Among other things, the fire doors, fire extinguishing system and fire dampers were defective, the speed and distance indicator did not work, as did the oil filters and the emergency generator. But after 24 days, the Azargoun was released again and was able to continue its activities.
The crews of the Iranian ships also arouse suspicion. We learned that the ships are also accompanied by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who pretend to be different. “They do this to circumvent the sanctions and to spy in European ports,” it sounds. Our security services also heard this, but could not prove that the ships here had members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on board incognito.
The confidential Syrian documents that our colleagues in Damascus found in the former headquarters of Assad’s general intelligence service contain the names, nationalities, dates of birth, passport details and functions of the varying 27 to 28 crew members of the Iranian ships Azargoun, Daisy, Kashan and Shiba when they visited the Syrian port. In addition to a handful of Indians, the changing crews, ranging from the captain to the cook, appear to consist only of Iranians.
An initial screening of the lists of names shows that there are at least some remarkable profiles among them. In addition to many crew members who are linked to the Iranian state-owned shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), there are also those who are not known as seafarers at all but officially have completely different, non-shipping-related jobs. There is also an Iranian officer who has a track record as an investigator in the General Inspection Department of the Iranian Law Enforcement Force.
Katoen Natie: ‘As a terminal, we don’t choose the ship’
‘The terminal follow the regulations, we don’t choose the ship,” says Patrik Naenen, business unit manager at Katoen Natie’s ABES terminal that received the Iranian ship Shiba. ‘It is the port authority that determines which ships are admitted and it follows the rules imposed by Europe.’
‘So if a ship is sanctioned, it won’t come. If it is not sanctioned, it can be booked by a forwarder, who then assigns the ship to a terminal to do the loading and unloading operations. The forwarder makes contracts with the terminals in the ports, which determine the pricing, and on that basis he decides where to send a particular ship with its cargo. That choice will be determined by the price, but sometimes also by technical or nautical aspects, such as the draught.’
‘It is also important to understand that it is not because an Iranian ship is coming, that you are doing business with an Iranian company. The ship is only the vehicle, the cargo is another matter. Katoen Natie is clear about this: we will not work with an Iranian company to set up a certain export flow. This is something else: we just carry out an operation on behalf of a forwarder.’
‘As a terminal, you don’t necessarily have a view of the cargo. If it is bulk, it is of course loose goods and then you can see what goes on or off the ship, and there are also documents that state which category of goods it is, but we do not do the check, it is customs that checks the goods.’
The owner of the Churchill Terminal on the right bank of the port of Antwerp, where the six Iranian ships came most often, refused to answer our questions. The terminal with a total surface area of 27 hectares and 70,000 square meters of storage capacity is owned by the Belgian group Nova Natie. CEO Maarten Geerardyn: ‘We are absolutely not going to respond to that.’
Front company
Officially, the Iranian container ships are owned by the Iranian company Hafez Darya Arya Shipping (HDS). But that would only be a front company of the Iranian state shipping company IRISL, which is known for providing logistical support to the Iranian army. The sanctions against Iran have caused dozens of ‘independent private companies’ to emerge in the Iranian shipping industry, but in reality they still operate under the umbrella of IRISL and used to be integral departments of it.
IRISL had already been sanctioned by the US and on November 18 last year, the state-owned shipping company also ended up on the EU sanctions list. The Council of the EU then expanded its sanctions against Iran for its support – with missiles and drones – of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Neither IRISL nor HDS answered our questions, but a German shipping agent who has been working with HDS since 2018 did. The German agent sees no problems with this cooperation and emphasizes that he only acted for HDS, never for IRISL. ‘Because there were no sanctions against HDS in the EU – and there still are none today – we thought it safe to operate as a line agent and ship broker for HDS within the EU. We are not aware that IRISL is the ultimate owner of the ships.’
Nevertheless, the Germans have now suspended cooperation with HDS ‘purely as a precautionary measure’, because according to them the sanctions against IRISL are ‘broad and vaguely formulated’. The EU sanctioning of IRISL has therefore suspended the visits of the six Iranian ships to the port of Antwerp until further notice.
The German agent said he did not know what goods the Iranian ships loaded and unloaded in the ports in Syria and Russia. ‘That falls outside the scope of our contractual obligations.’ The Germans say they only know about the innocent goods that were imported and exported here in Antwerp. ‘Typical imports on HDS ships are polyethylene for packaging, used cooking oil for the biofuel sector, ceramic products such as tiles and foodstuffs such as pistachios. Exports from Antwerp to Iran are new machines, including for the beverage industry, used industrial equipment such as car parts, textile processing machines and insulation materials.’
All Iranian weapons intercepted en route to Houthis
Between May 2021 and January 2023, the US authorities already intercepted a mass weapon of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards destined for Yemen. This happened during routine maritime security operations in and around the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It involved more than 9,000 rifles, 284 machine guns, 194 rocket launchers, more than 70 anti-tank missiles and more than 700,000 pieces of ammunition. The French navy was also able to seize thousands of assault rifles, machine guns and anti-tank missiles in January 2023 in the Gulf of Oman, coming from Iran and on their way to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Now that the six Iranian ships are no longer coming to Antwerp (for the time being) – the Daisy was the last to arrive here until November 9, 2024 – it is striking that they have immediately shifted their entire route. They have not been to Syria or Russia in recent months. The Azargoun is now moving to China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Libya. The Artenos now goes to India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the UAE. The Kashan to India, the UAE, Kenya and Tanzania. The Shiba to India, Libya, Turkey and the UAE. The Artam to China, India, Tanzania, Kenya and the UAE.
Can the ships still return to Antwerp? Antwerp Port Authority refers ‘all questions about Iranian ships’ to the Federal Public Service Mobility. According to Mobility spokesman Thomas De Spiegelaere, it is currently sufficient that the Iranian state-owned shipping company IRISL has been sanctioned to no longer allow the six ships to enter our ports, even though those ships are officially owned by another company. ‘IRISL is listed in the databases as the beneficial owner of the ships. That is enough for us to stop them. A ship has several managers and operators.’
Everything checked
“But other Iranian ships that do not belong to IRISL are still allowed to come to Belgian ports for legitimate reasons,” says the spokesperson for the FPS Mobility. “There are no sanctions against Iranian ships in general. We are not bound by the American sanctions against Iran and will therefore not follow them.’
In 2023 and 2024, twelve different Iranian ships came to Antwerp, accounting for 44 visits. In 20 of the 44 cases, it concerned ships that were sanctioned by the US. And six of the twelve ships would therefore have been involved in espionage or arms deliveries.
The question is whether other Iranian ships can now simply use Antwerp as a ‘cover’. Because the six ships remained untouched all this time. De Spiegelaere: ‘When these ships still came to the Belgian ports, there were no EU sanctions. There were sanctions against specific goods or dual-use goods. But that has always been checked, the calls of these ships were always legitimate and the goods that were loaded or unloaded were in accordance with the rules. So there were no legal grounds for refusing these ships.’
For our investigation into the Iranian ships, we received help from foreign fellow journalists: the Iranian Mahtab Divsalar (Zamaneh), the Syrian Mohammad Bassiki (SIRAJ), the German Ruben Schaar (Paper Trail Media), Birte Schohaus and Dimitri Tokmetzis (Follow the Money)and of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
