History
Due to the increase in the volume of imports into Iran since early 1960, consequence of which was to employ many foreign flag vessels to trade within Iranian ports caused some concerns to the country. In addition, the need and importance of a regular carriage of goods by sea and considering peculiar geographical characteristic, accessibility to open seas, with having had long water boundary and water ways to and from Iran made the necessity in initiating a research study to establish the first and biggest integrated national shipping lines. The result of the research study, which was started in 1961, was approved by the first general assembly meeting to establish Iranian National Shipping Company on August 1967 with the name of Aria Shipping Lines.
Aria Shipping started its activity in 1967 by two small size vessels with capacity of 1000 and 1550 tones in Persian Gulf area and 4 ocean going vessels, namely, Aria Sep, Aria Far, Aria Naz and Aria Gaam with the total capacity of 61,252 tones that had been put into service between the Persian gulf-Europe, Asia and America. By the end of 1978 the number of Aria shipping vessels was 42 with the total capacity of 525,000 DWT which proved the increasing of the sea transportation volume by Aria shipping lines and its effective role in Iran economy.
After the Islamic Revolution and change of economical and political policy on January 5, 1979, the authority renamed the Aria Shipping to Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and affiliated the company to the ministry of commerce.
During the Iran-Iraq War, numerous vessels such as Aria Boom, Aria Jahan, Aria Shaad, Aria Omid, became total losses due to missile attacks, as a result of which, the IRISL suffered dearly. After this period, the names of all the vessels were changed to those of martyrs and cities - with the prefix "IRAN".
However since American sanctions (over Iran's support for various groups and nuclear program) have begun to hinder IRISL has taken to quickly renaming its ships under shell companies in order to continue trading in banned goods.
Read more about this topic: IRISL Group
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