The United States announced sanctions Thursday against shipping networks responsible for allegedly funding Iran’s terrorist activities through illicit oil sales.
An airline and its affiliates that arm and supply Iran-backed terrorist groups will also be sanctioned, according to the U.S. State Department’s announcement.
The State Department sanctioned 17 entities, people, and ships in several countries, including India, Panama, and the Seychelles, for their involvement in Iran’s petroleum and petroleum products sales.
The U.S. Department of Treasury designated 41 entities, people, ships, and aircraft involved in Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical exports to be sanctioned. The department is also disrupting financial streams and commercial operatives that support Iran’s hostile activities.
President Donald Trump’s national security memorandum signed Feb. 4 states Iran remained the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and has helped the terrorist organizations Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist networks.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is also a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to the memo.
Iran’s activities include targeting U.S. nationals living in the U.S. and abroad for attacks, including assault, kidnapping, and murder. Iran has also directed its proxy groups, including Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization, to embed sleeper cells in the U.S. to be activated in support of its terrorist activity, according to Trump.
Iran has committed grievous human rights abuses and arbitrarily detains foreigners without due process of law, the president stated in the memo. The U.S. also stands with the women in Iran who face daily abuse by the regime, Trump said.
The memo also stated Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential danger to the United States and the world.
“Iran’s behavior threatens the national interest of the United States,” Trump stated in the memorandum. “It is therefore in the national interest to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop its support for terrorist groups.”
Among other directions, the memorandum instructs the Treasury secretary to put maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran by imposing sanctions or other enforcement remedies on all people who violate sanctions, implement a robust and continual sanction enforcement campaign, and other actions to deny the regime and its terror proxies access to revenue.
The Secretary of State was directed to implement a robust campaign to drive Iran’s export of oil to zero, including exports of Iranian crude to the People’s Republic of China.
