Between January 2025 and July 2026, more than 900 voyages to the Iraqi port of Khor al Zubair were falsified. Advanced AIS spoofing lets vessels mimic normal sailing patterns, appearing to load legitimately in port while actually operating elsewhere, most likely in sanctioned trades. The technique has been replicated at ports in the UAE, Oman, Russia and Japan, but Khor al Zubair is its natural home. The port anchors a well-documented laundering scheme in which Iranian crude is blended with Iraqi oil and exported under Iraqi paperwork – a channel the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has repeatedly sanctioned, most recently targeting a sitting Iraqi deputy oil minister.[1]
For over a year, the pattern was stable. Spoofed voyages ran between 45 and 78 per month, roughly 45 percent of all reported calls. Then came March 2026. When Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed and began attacking transiting vessels, Gulf tanker traffic collapsed to near zero. Spoofed calls fell to just six that month – not because deception stopped paying, but because spoofing needs a fleet of ships to hide in, and the fleet was gone.
The recovery is where the story turns. From April onward, spoofed voyages rebounded to 20 to 26 per month, three to four times the wartime low. More telling is the ratio: in every single month since the war began, fake port calls have outnumbered real ones. The spoofed share of reported traffic has climbed from 45 percent to 57 percent. The majority of what AIS data shows arriving at Khor al Zubair no longer exists.
The driver is straightforward. The US naval blockade imposed during the conflict more than halved Iranian oil loadings, making the Iraqi blending route one of the few reliable channels left. Maritime intelligence firms have already identified sanctioned tankers manufacturing fake Khor al Zubair calls to pass Iranian cargo off as Iraqi.[2]
For underwriters, the lesson is uncomfortable: a port call in the data is no longer evidence of a port call. When legitimate traffic thins, deceptive traffic doesn’t thin with it – it becomes the signal. Screening that treats AIS as ground truth is now screening a fiction.
[1] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0233Â and https://www.gtreview.com/supplements/gtr-risk-2025/the-next-frontier-in-iranian-oil-smuggling/
[2] https://windward.ai/blog/april-29-maritime-intelligence-daily/
