but Iranian smugglers seem to be having little trouble evading Iranian customs.
Speedboats, each manned by two Iranian smugglers, make three trips a day, sometimes more, from Qeshm Island to Oman and back with luxury goods. They pay Omani tax; they skip Iranian taxes.
Agence France Presse (AFP) has spoken with some of the smugglers as they loaded up their boats in Oman’s Khasab-port.
The mostly teenage smugglers carry banned and highly taxed commercial goods on tiny boats from the Omani enclave across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran for sale on the black market.
“It’s dangerous, but I need the work and the money is good,” said an 18-year-old Iranian boat driver, who smuggles everything from flat-screen TVs and microwaves to Indian tea and American soft drinks into Iran.
With each trip, 60 kilometers (40 miles) each way, the smugglers, pocket about $30 dollars each. But the 40-minute dash across the waterway does have its share of danger.
“Sometimes we get shot at by the Iranian patrol boats. Sometimes we get arrested,” said another smuggler who lost a friend last year when Iranian patrols opened fire on him as he approached Iran’s shores.
The weather, however, is actually their greatest foe.
“We can try to escape from the patrols, or even bribe them if we get caught,… but you can’t negotiate with the sea,” the smuggler told AFP.
An Omani customs agent at Khasabport said some 500 boats make the journey across the Strait of Hormuz daily, a practice he says is legal in Oman, but illegal once the goods cross into Iranian waters.
The agent, who identified himself as Abu Dhahi, told AFP the Omanis inspect and tax the goods before they are cleared for export.
The electronic goods, cosmetics, clothing, tobacco and soft drinks, among a wide range of other products which arrive from neighboring Dubai, are then loaded onto the speedboats.
As he described the day-to-day operations of the smugglers, young Iranian men loaded boxes of mobile phones, perfumes and hair-removal cream onto waiting speedboats, wrapped them tightly with grey tarpaulin to protect them from ocean spray and secured them with rope in preparation for the bumpy ride ahead.
Abu Dhahi said the smugglers are banned from carrying weapons, and all cargo entering and leaving the port is “carefully inspected.”
“No weapons, alcohol or drugs are allowed through this port,” he said, adding that the smugglers do not pose a security threat to the shipping lanes in the strait.
“These are just young boys trying to make a living,” he said. “And as far as we are concerned in Oman, there’s nothing illegal going on here.”