Local media said that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seized a foreign-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf on Monday, with officials claiming it was smuggling millions of liters of petroleum.

Mojtaba Ghahremani, chief justice of the province of Hormozgan, stated that IRGC personnel boarded the vessel and discovered it was carrying 11 million gallons of oil.

Ghahremani stated that the captain and crew have been detained while the situation is investigated.

He did not identify the ship's name or the country under whose flag it was sailing.

According to Iranian media, Iran's naval forces have recently stopped several oil-smuggling vessels in Gulf maritime routes. The Persian Gulf is a significant route for transporting the world's oil.

Reuters claimed that Iran is attempting to thwart widespread oil and fuel smuggling by land and water to Gulf states. The smuggling has occurred as Iran's currency has plummeted under the weight of US sanctions imposed following the failure of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

Under the Trump administration, the United States withdrew in 2018 from the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program designed to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran responded to the reimposition of harsh penalties by abandoning several of its commitments to the accord. The talks sponsored by the European Union to renew the pact failed to reach an agreement.

Since then, the value of the rial, Iran's currency, has dropped to all-time lows.

In a separate instance earlier this month, Iran's foreign ministry stated that their business had changed the crew of one of the two Greek oil tankers captured by Iranian armed forces in May.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized the vessels in the Persian Gulf days after Greece declared it would hand over to the United States the Iranian oil it had taken from a Russian tanker.

Greece seized the Russian ship Pegas at the request of the United States, which has imposed punishing sanctions on Iran, particularly its oil exports.