US Slaps New Sanctions On Iran’s Arms Supply Network
The US Treasury Department has announced sanctions on 21 Iranian and foreign nationals and entities for involvement in financial networks helping Iran's military.
The US Treasury Department has announced sanctions on 21 Iranian and foreign nationals and entities for involvement in financial networks helping Iran's military.
On Wednesday, the Treasury said those sanctioned helped generate funds for Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff (AFGS), and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), the extraterritorial wing of the IRGC.
"Iran generates the equivalent of billions of dollars via commodity sales to fund its destabilizing regional activities and support of multiple regional proxy groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah," the Treasury said, referring to the Islamist Palestinian militant group and the Lebanese Shiite armed force and political party.
The Treasury said the Iranian military used "intricate networks of foreign-based front companies and brokers to enable these illicit commercial activities."
US Department of State Spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that Iranian military entities and their business partners enable these sales and exploit the international financial system to recoup the revenue, further fueling the conflict in Israel - which broke out on October 7 following a surprise invasion by Hamas - and spreading terror throughout the Middle East. “The United States will continue to disrupt Iran’s funding support for terrorists.”
The Iranian regime has become the focus of attention in the West after the terror attack on Israel by Hamas which has led to the bloodiest conflict in Gaza since the militant group took control in 2007.
Although voicing unequivocal support for Hamas, Tehran has been denying any role in the bloody invasion that killed around 1,400 Israelis. Iran’s strategy since the 1980s, when it helped establish Hezbollah, has been to use militant and violent groups to build influence around the world and target the interests of Israel and Western countries.
The new round of sanctions includes Iran-based companies Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars Company and Pishro Tejarat Sana Company as well as Iranian citizens Majid A’zami, Elyas Niroomand Toomaj and Abdoljavad Alavi. Treasury also put sanctions on two Hong Kong-based firms, accusing Puyuan Trade Co Limited of brokering sales of tens of millions of condensate, a form of ultralight crude oil, to HK Sihang Haochen Trading Limited.
Also sanctioned were several United Arab Emirates-based firms. These included Unique Performance General Trading LLC, to which Sepehr Energy agreed to sell Iranian light crude for delivery in China, and OPG Global General Trading Co LLC, which offered to sell crude and gasoline on Sepehr Energy's behalf to Persian Gulf customers for onward shipment to Europe, the Treasury said.
In addition, Washington sanctioned Dubai-based JEP Petrochemical Trading LLC, which paid Dubai-based Future Energy Trading LLC the equivalent of more than $400 million to buy Iranian oil from Sepehr Energy.
Three other companies targeted were Dubai-based A Three Energy FZE along with Sharjah-based brokers Tetis Global FZE and Royal Shell Goods Wholesalers LLC, which Sepehr Energy used to enable sales of Iranian commodities to foreign buyers.
After the US, Dubai has one of the largest populations of Iranians outside Iran, both pro and anti regime.
In addition, the Treasury said it had imposed sanctions on four companies and three individuals for supporting illicit financial networks on behalf of the IRGC-QF.
It named the companies as UAE-based Transmart DMCC and Solise Energy (FZE) and as Singapore-based MSE Overseas PTE Ltd and Sealink Overseas PTE Ltd and the individuals as Zabi Vahap, Adelina Kuliyeva and Mehboob Thachankandy Palikandy.
US officials have attributed the prevention of specific weapons parts sales to Iran to a controversial surveillance authority, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a tool that is set to expire at the end of the year.
The surveillance effort successfully thwarted multiple shipments of advanced weapons components intended for Iran via land, air, and sea as the CIA and various intelligence agencies leveraged data collected through monitoring the electronic communications of foreign weapons manufacturers. Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect and analyze communications such as emails and text messages of foreigners living abroad.
There is a hot debate in Washington over whether to reauthorize the tool or reform it, with the Biden administration arguing that it is crucial to national security and Section 702 will lose much of its usefulness if more guardrails are put on it.
US officials say Section 702 was critical to stopping the weapons sales in the case of Iran’s advanced weapons program. They said they used other spying activities to identify what US-made supplies the Iranians needed, and then plugged the names of those components and their manufacturers into the 702 databases.
Despite US restrictive measures, more and more controls are falling away as Iran is eying even further market for its cheap drones and missiles. Last month, the UN sent letters to countries announcing the end of bans on Iran's missile program, removing barriers for the clerical regime to sell dangerous technologies. Iran, historically allied with Russia, faces accusations of supplying lethal drones to Moscow for use in Ukraine, though it asserts its neutrality in the conflict. Iran is now free to sell its drones, ballistic missiles, and related long-range strike technologies to its anti-Western partners and clients and can also procure technology for further development.
When asked if the EU and Germany should outlaw the IRGC, Lior Haiat, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry told Iran International “We do. Because it is a terror organization.”
Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told Iran International, that the “IRGC and Hezbollah are terror groups and must be designated as such”.
Norbert Röttgen, a German MP from the Christian Democratic Union, told Iran International that "The German government has now repeatedly stated that the legal prerequisites for putting the IRGC on the EU terror list do not exist. This is simply not true. There are numerous cases, from within the EU as well as Canada and the US, which could be used as a basis for the process. I believe that the German government and the EU do not want to put the IRGC on the terror list, because they still hope for a revival of the JCPOA. But this is wishful thinking.“
The JCPOA is an acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.
Röttgen, who has spearheaded the efforts in Germany and on the continent to classify the IRGC as a terrorist organization, added “The regime has made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in a new deal. They are playing for time to finish building the nuclear bomb and they are already dangerously close. Germany and the EU urgently need a new Iran policy which focuses on supporting the people in Iran which want to get rid of the regime. This entails doing everything within our means to make life as difficult as possible for the Islamic Republic, including putting the IRGC as the political, economic and military center of power of the regime on the EU terror list."
Iran International sent press queries to Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, from the Green party, who has consistently refused to designate the IRGC a terrorist organization.
The United States during the Trump administration designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. US lawmakers previously called on American allies to outlaw the IRGC as a terrorist entity.
Iran International reported that Iranians pressed the EU in January to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The European Union Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in early 2023 to sanction the IRGC as a terrorist movement.
Josep Borrell, Europe’s foreign policy chief, according to reports, does not wish to sanction the IRGC because it could impact the Islamic Republic’s willingness to negotiate an atomic deal that would impose temporary restrictions on its illegal nuclear program. Borrell also argues there needs to be a European judicial ruling against the IRGC’s terrorism activities to secure a ban of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
However, Röttgen and counter-terrorism experts have provided rulings. A telling example was the A German court convicted a Pakistani man in 2017 who was paid by the IRGC to engage in an assassination attempt of pro-Israel advocates.
The Quds Force—a part of the IRGC—paid Pakistani Syed Mustaf at least 2,052 euros from July 2015 to 2016 to spy on Jewish and Israel institutions and carry out the assassination plot.
Borrell’s office did not immediately answer Iran International press queries.
The Islamic Republic’s organized plan to aid Hamas in its massacre of 1,200 people, including at least 31 Americans, was front-and-center in the thinking of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to a report published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Khamenei hinted on two different occasions, in 2022 and 2023, at "The Complete Conquest" of Israel in his media mouthpiece Kayhan.
According to a MEMRI translation from Khamenei’s propaganda outlet, Kayhan, the plan of mass murder was engineered by the late Iranian global terrorist Qassem Soleimani in 2020. The U.S. military assassinated Soleimani in early January 2020 for his overseeing the killing of over 600 American military personnel.
Kayhan wrote, according to the translation, that in August 2023 "The significance is that, last year, the Leader [Khamenei] gave 'the promise of the imminent conquest,' and this year he gave 'the announcement of the complete conquest,' and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is part of this imminent conquest. This promise and announcement, along with the clarity and power of [Khamenei's] statements and positions in his meeting [with leaders and ambassadors of Islamic countries] on the occasion of the Prophet [Muhammad's] birthday, have profound significance and content."
The European Union has only classified Hezbollah's so-called “military wing” a terrorist entity but permits its “political wing” to raise funds and recruit new members. Hezbollah considers its movement to be a monolithic organization without wings.
The EU commissioner tasked with fighting anti-semitism, Katherina von Schnurbein, and her German counterpart, Felix Klein, have repeatedly refused to urge the EU and Germany to outlaw the lethal antisemitic organization IRGC. Both von Schnurbein and Klein faced criticism this year from Israeli General Amir Avivi because they praised an allegedly deficient German national report to combat antisemitism as a “milestone.” Avivi objected to the report because Klein and Germany’s interior ministry failed to include antisemitism from Hamas and Iran’s regime in the report as major threats to German Jews and the state of Israel.
Klein and von Schnurbein declined to respond if they agreed with their Israeli counterpart, Cotler-Wunsh, about the immediate need to designate Hezbollah and the IRGC as terrorist entities.
After considerable pressure from then-US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, the German interior ministry outlawed all Hezbollah activities within its territory in 2020. Germany, however, has failed to enforce the ban, argue critics. According to German intelligence reports from 2023, there are 1,250 active Hezbollah operatives in Germany.