How purchases of sanctioned Iranian jet fuel were disguised by Myanmar

In December 2025, the U.S.-sanctioned tanker Reef arrived in Myanmar waters with some 113,000 barrels of fuel backed by sham paperwork.

Myanmar-based energy broker Dynamic Wave ordered the shipment, agreeing in a sales contract inked with Thailand’s Tawan-Oil Trading to supposedly take delivery of a similar amount of South African diesel. But the $15.8 million agreement was a charade: There was no such trade between South Africa and Myanmar in 2025, according to data from the United Nations and Vortexa, a shipping and energy data provider.

In reality, Reef carried jet fuel from Iran to Myanmar, according to records of fuel shipments to Myanmar, as well as satellite images and analysis by SynMax Intelligence, which tracked the tanker’s journey from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to Southeast Asia.

The deception was needed because the U.S. in 2023 imposed targeted sanctions on Myanmar’s jet-fuel industry. The U.S. did so citing the deadly bombing campaign waged by the Southeast Asian country’s military on civilian targets as part of an effort to crush a rebel-led insurgency. All purchasers of Iranian oil and fuel are also exposed to sweeping American sanctions.

Details of how Myanmar disguised purchases of Iranian jet fuel, as well as the entities involved in the transactions, are reported here for the first time.

Myanmar’s military junta was involved in the ruse. Days before Reef arrived, Myanmar’s foreign exchange regulator told the client of Dynamic Wave that it would issue import documentation that labeled the delivery as diesel “instead of jet fuel,” according to a copy of the agency’s Nov. 30 letter. The document, which was provided by the activist group Justice for Myanmar, did not explain the purpose of the mislabeling.

The letter from the regulator also authorized Dynamic Wave and its client, National Energy Prime Aviation Services Company, to pay Tawan for the shipment.

Neither Dynamic Wave nor its client, which is part-owned by Myanmar’s military-backed government, responded to questions about the fuel shipment.

Spokespeople for Myanmar’s military-backed government and foreign exchange regulator, as well as the Iranian foreign ministry, also did not return requests for comment.

Tehran was the Myanmar military’s primary supplier of jet fuel between October 2024 and December 2025, with much of the trade carried out by the tankers Reef — since renamed Maris — and Noble, a report revealed in January.

The scheme underscores both the reach and limits of Washington’s power. The lengths taken to disguise the trade suggest U.S. sanctions are biting. But Iranian jet fuel has continued to flow, earning Tehran valuable foreign currency and providing Myanmar with the means to conduct both commercial aviation and air raids.

The U.S. Treasury did not respond to questions about jet-fuel shipments between Iran and Myanmar.

Jet fuel, airstrikes and civilian casualties 

Myanmar’s generals seized power in 2021 from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The coup sparked a civil war, during which the military has killed thousands — including many civilians — in aerial assaults, the United Nations said in August.

Myanmar’s foreign ministry said in response to the U.N. allegations that the military “exercises maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm.”

Justice for Myanmar, which also shared the fuel sales contract, published a report on Monday concluding that Myanmar’s junta was importing jet fuel mislabeled as diesel.

The organization, which supports further sanctions on Myanmar’s jet fuel imports, said it obtained the documents from a junta-run server that was briefly publicly accessible.

A dead link to one of the documents was found on the DuckDuckGo search engine, indicating it had once been hosted on that server. Delivery dates and fuel quantities in the documents also match Iranian jet fuel shipment records that were separately reviewed by the news agency.

Thai bank connection

The sales contract for Dynamic Wave’s fuel shipment stipulated that the payment be transferred into Tawan’s account at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s oldest bank.

Tawan was identified by U.N. experts in a 2024 report as a jet-fuel supplier to Myanmar’s military. The firm has not commented on those allegations.

SCB was described as a major facilitator of Myanmar military procurement in that report.

The bank said after the report’s release that it adheres to laws against money laundering and that its Myanmar-related transactions were legitimate and not connected to the arms trade.

Whether SCB was aware of the nature of Tawan’s business could not be determined.

Thai regulators in 2024 ordered banks to closely scrutinize transactions involving Myanmar in order to comply with sanctions and law against money laundering.

SCB did not respond to repeated requests for comment about its commercial relationship with Tawan.

Tawan and the Bank of Thailand, which supervises the kingdom’s financial industry, also did not respond to questions.

The December shipment was not the first time jet fuel arrived in Myanmar disguised as diesel.

Dynamic Wave in May 2025 agreed to buy from Tawan 202,000 barrels of what a second contract, also obtained from the junta server, described as South African diesel. The agreement stipulated that the diesel should arrive at Yangon within a month and that Dynamic Wave would pay $26 million into Tawan’s SCB account.

The invoice for that contract contained discrepancies suggesting the tanker actually contained jet fuel.

The density of the fuel listed in the document 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 data from Platts, the energy-industry information provider. In addition, the price of the fuel was more than 50% higher than a global diesel benchmark.

Noble called at Yangon on June 17 carrying just under 200,000 barrels of jet fuel earmarked for Dynamic Wave, shipment records show.

Like Reef’s December shipment, Noble’s cargo was loaded at Iran’s Bandar Abbas, according to SynMax’s analysis of satellite imagery. As it made its way to Myanmar’s commercial capital, Noble transmitted location signals that made it appear as though its destination was the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh, according to SynMax.

The manager of the Reef and Noble tankers did not respond to questions sent via its listed website.

Shipments of jet fuel between Iran and Myanmar have continued this year, based on SynMax analysis and satellite imagery.