From the beginning, though, Irisl has sought to outmaneuver its pursuers.

Just days after the United Nations enacted the 2008 inspection provision, for instance, an Irisl cargo ship bound for Turkey suddenly made a high-speed, high-seas dash up the Mediterranean to the port of Latakia, Syria. The chase came after a NATO ship, which had been tipped off that the vessel might be carrying weapons, questioned its cargo, according to an account by government officials of the episode, which was previously unreported.

Next, Iran began using chartered ships from other countries, ones less likely to raise red flags. But that tactic ultimately backfired when the non-Iranian crews cooperated with requests to inspect the cargo. In three boardings, two by the United States Navy and one by Israeli commandos, authorities said they had discovered a virtual arms bazaar, including thousands of Katyusha rockets, grenades and mortar shells, believed to be intended for Hezbollah.

New Flags and Names

By the time the United States placed Irisl’s fleet on its sanctions list, in the fall of 2008, the company had already begun its corporate camouflage. The first step, records show, was to replace the ships’ Iranian flags, primarily with those of Germany, Hong Kong and Malta. Over time, almost all got new, innocuous-sounding English names, like the Bluebell and the Angel. One simply became the Alias.

Then, with the sanctions in place, three new Iranian companies suddenly appeared on the scene: Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines, Sapid Shipping and Soroush Sarzamin Asatir.

In January 2009, it was announced that Hafiz Darya had taken over Irisl’s container ship business in what the shipping trade media reported as a murky deal. Irisl officials, while providing no financial or other details of the deal, insisted that Hafiz Darya was an independent entity, and that the move had been part of a larger government privatization effort.

Virtually overnight, Hafiz Darya took Irisl’s spot as the world’s 23rd largest container shipper, while Irisl disappeared from the top 100. Sapid, for its part, took over the operation of 39 blacklisted bulk carrier and general cargo ships, records show. In paperwork they filed with IHS Fairplay, the ship-tracking group, Hafiz Darya and Sapid listed separate addresses in Tehran.

Visits to both places yielded no sign of them, though the address provided by Hafiz Darya was home to the “Irisl Club”  a closed-off compound of gardens, reception halls and restaurants for Irisl company use. However, both Hafiz Darya and Sapid were discovered to be working out of the third floor of Irisl’s Aseman Tower headquarters in uptown Tehran. The address provided by Soroush, which manages the ships that Sapid now operates, turned out to be the Irisl Maritime Institute, also in Tehran.