Sanctioned Russian Tycoon's Superyacht Slips Through Hormuz
Vessel monitoring platform MarineTraffic recorded the Nord departing a Dubai marina at approximately 1400 GMT Friday, threading through the strait on Saturday morning, and dropping anchor in Muscat in the early hours of Sunday.
The passage is notable given the dramatic collapse in maritime traffic since hostilities erupted on Feb. 28. The Strait of Hormuz — which under normal conditions channels roughly one-fifth of the entire global oil supply and sees between 125 and 140 vessel transits daily — has been reduced to a trickle, with only a handful of predominantly merchant vessels daring the crossing each day. Washington has compounded the disruption by imposing restrictions on Iranian ports as part of its broader response to Tehran's actions in the waterway.
Mordashov, a steel magnate and controlling shareholder of Severstal, was placed under US and EU sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, owing to his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The superyacht's transit through one of the world's most contested chokepoints arrives against a backdrop of accelerating Russian-Iranian alignment. The two nations — longstanding partners — formalized deeper cooperation through a treaty signed in 2025, encompassing intelligence and security collaboration. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi landed in Russia on Monday for direct talks with President Putin, fresh from weekend consultations with mediators in Pakistan and Oman.
The confluence of a sanctioned oligarch's vessel crossing a war-strained strait — as the two countries it connects deepen their strategic embrace — has drawn renewed scrutiny from analysts tracking the shifting geopolitical currents around the Gulf.
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