New Delhi, Aug. 22 -- Six men climbed aboard a tanker in the Gulf of Aden last Thursday. The Sibu 1, an Eritrea-flagged oil vessel already under United States sanctions for ferrying Iranian petroleum in violation of export controls, was diverted off Yemen's coast and began moving toward Somalia. It became, in the ledger that maritime security analysts have been keeping this year, the thirteenth vessel seized or attacked off the Horn of Africa in 2026. There were five in all of 2025.

and what that identity reveals about a resurgent piracy industry that may be harder to suppress the second time around.

The Sibu 1's seizure is not simply a crime story. It is a geopolitical one. The tanker was placed on the United States Treasury Department...