In December 2025 a US-sanctioned tanker, the Reef, arrived in Myanmar’s waters with about 113,000 barrels of fuel. The paperwork said the cargo was South African diesel. In reality, it was jet fuel from Iran. The case, reconstructed from contracts, regulatory letters, shipping records and satellite analysis, shows in unusual detail how two heavily sanctioned countries have found a way to keep trading. It also raises questions about the role of intermediaries, banks and regulators, and about how much pressure sanctions can exert when the target and its supplier are determined to avoid them.
The shipment was ordered by Dynamic Wave, a Myanmar-based energy broker. Under a $15.8 million sales contract with Thailand’s Tawan-Oil Trading, it was supposedly to take delivery of a similar amount of South African diesel. There was no such trade between South Africa and Myanmar in 2025, according to United Nations data and the shipping and energy analytics firm Vortexa.
The tanker’s actual journey told a different story. Records of fuel shipments to Myanmar, satellite images and analysis by SynMax Intelligence tracked the vessel from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to Southeast Asia. The cargo was jet fuel, and its origin was Iran.
The effort to hide the trade follows from two layers of sanctions. In 2023 the United States imposed targeted sanctions on Myanmar’s jet-fuel industry, citing the military’s deadly bombing campaign against civilian targets as part of its effort to crush a rebel-led insurgency. Separately, all purchasers of Iranian oil and fuel are exposed to sweeping American sanctions. A cargo of Iranian jet fuel bound for Myanmar therefore broke both sets of rules, and everyone involved in paying for or financing it faced risk.
The solution was to change the label. Calling the fuel diesel, and the supplier South African, avoided the jet-fuel restrictions and concealed the Iranian origin at the same time. Diesel is also far more widely traded, so a diesel cargo attracts less suspicion.
The most significant finding is that the deception was not only the work of private traders. Days before the Reef arrived, Myanmar’s foreign exchange regulator told the client of Dynamic Wave that it would issue import documentation labelling the delivery as diesel “instead of jet fuel”. The document did not explain the purpose of the mislabelling. The same letter authorised Dynamic Wave and its client, National Energy Prime Aviation Services Company, to pay Tawan for the shipment.
The client is part-owned by Myanmar’s military-backed government. Neither Dynamic Wave nor its client responded to questions, and spokespeople for the government, the regulator and Iran’s foreign ministry also did not respond. The US Treasury likewise did not answer questions about the shipments.
The December cargo was not an isolated case. In May 2025, Dynamic Wave agreed to buy 202,000 barrels from Tawan of what a second contract described as South African diesel, with delivery to Yangon within a month and a payment of $26 million. The invoice contained discrepancies that pointed to jet fuel. The density listed matched the specifications for jet fuel rather than diesel sold in Southeast Asia, according to Joshua Heyne, a jet-fuel expert at Washington State University, and Platts data. The price was also more than 50% above a global diesel benchmark, a gap that is hard to explain for ordinary diesel.
The tanker Noble called at Yangon on June 17 with just under 200,000 barrels of jet fuel earmarked for Dynamic Wave. Like the Reef’s cargo, it was loaded at Bandar Abbas. During the voyage, Noble transmitted location signals that made it appear to be heading for Chittagong in Bangladesh, according to SynMax. Falsified tracking is a familiar technique in sanctions evasion, since it hides the true route from monitors who follow ship movements.
The money trail leads to Thailand. The sales contract stipulated that payment be made into Tawan’s account at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), the country’s oldest bank. A 2024 UN experts’ report identified Tawan as a jet-fuel supplier to Myanmar’s military and described SCB as a major facilitator of Myanmar military procurement. Tawan has not commented on those allegations. SCB said after the report that it adheres to anti-money-laundering laws and that its Myanmar-related transactions were legitimate and not connected to the arms trade. The stakes go beyond trade. Myanmar’s generals seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, and the coup sparked a civil war. According to the United Nations, in August the military has killed thousands of people, many of them civilians, in aerial assaults. Myanmar’s foreign ministry responded that the military “exercises maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm.”
Jet fuel is directly relevant to this. It provides Myanmar with the means to conduct both commercial aviation and air raids. That is why the 2023 sanctions targeted it, and why activists want enforcement tightened.
The investigation points to a paradox. On one hand, the lengths to which the parties went suggest that sanctions are biting: fake contracts, mislabelled imports, spoofed location signals and layered payment arrangements all add cost and risk. On the other, the fuel kept flowing. Iran earned valuable foreign currency, and Myanmar kept its aircraft supplied.
This points to three weak points. First, documentation can be forged or officially altered, as the regulator’s letter suggests, which limits what customs and trade data can reveal. Second, shipping surveillance depends on signals that can be manipulated, and on satellite analysis that requires specialised resources. Third, banks in third countries sit between the sanctions regime and the traders, and their diligence varies.
For enforcement, the likely directions include scrutiny of intermediaries such as Dynamic Wave and Tawan, further designations of vessels and their managers, and pressure on financial institutions that handle the payments. For campaigners, the leaked documents will strengthen the argument for wider sanctions on Myanmar’s fuel imports. Whether Washington acts will depend on its priorities, since the Treasury has not commented, and on the diplomatic costs of targeting a Thai bank or other third-country players.
The Reef and Noble cases show that sanctions are a contest of detection against deception. The investigation has made the mechanics visible, from the paper trail to the satellite tracks, and has linked a distant bombing campaign to a series of invoices, letters and bank accounts. What it cannot show is whether the exposure will change behaviour. Without action against the intermediaries and the financial channels, the likelihood is that the trade will adapt rather than stop, with new labels, new routes and new tankers.
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