"Sanchi sank 10 months ago. It is more than obvious that they copied and pasted the names from the older list of the sanctions," an Iranian Twitter user wrote. "Trump who won presidency thanks to 'fake news' is now using 'fake sanctions' by naming a ship that sank already … only to be the front-runner of unilateralism," another tweeter said of the reimposed US sanctions on Iran that went into effect Nov. 4. "God chooses our foes from among the stupid," read a third post that was part of a seemingly endless stream of comments about the US government "gaffe."

The Sanchi was a Panama-registered tanker hired by Iran's oil shipping operator. On Jan. 6, the South Korea-bound vessel collided with the CF Crystal about 160 nautical miles off the coast of China near Shanghai, leaving its entire crew of 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis dead.

But the US government was not just mistaken about the tanker. The list also included Bank Tat, which was closed six years ago and emerged later as Bank Ayandeh, a structurally and managerially different entity. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spotted both in the US list, describing the mistakes as a desperate psychological operation "to amplify the list of sanctioned Iranian entities." In a video message, Zarif also addressed the nation, stressing that the sanctions are meant to target ordinary Iranians, as yet another sign of "US frustration," and the fact that the world, "except for a few small regional countries and the Zionist regime," is against the US moves on Iran.

Javan, a newspaper close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, echoed the same official line of defiance in its coverage of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Nov. 5 press conference on Iran. Javan referred to Pompeo as a "paper tiger" and said his speech was just about reimposing sanctions that had never been lifted in reality. It also hinted at what it called the US "defeat" in placing an overall ban on purchases of Iranian oil.