US slaps new sanctions on individuals and firms that help Iran sell its oil

The United States has issued a new wave of sanctions against Iran, targeting people and entities it says are involved in illicit fund transfers that benefit the country’s military activities.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) confirmed on Tuesday that it had sanctioned more than a dozen Iranian individuals and companies based in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.

Those targeted, the OFAC said, had helped to move funds for the benefit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Ministry of Defence.

Some of the money came from the sale of Iranian oil, the US Treasury added.

“Iranian ‘shadow banking’ networks like these — run by trusted illicit financial facilitators — abuse the international financial system, and evade sanctions by laundering money through overseas front companies and cryptocurrency,” it said.

John K Hurley, the US Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, added that the Trump administration would continue to disrupt money flowing into “Iran’s weapons programmes and malign activities in the Middle East and beyond”.

The US government alleges that Iranian nationals Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand, who are both on the new sanctions list, facilitated the purchase of $100m worth of cryptocurrency for the Iranian government.

As a result of the sanctions, they and the other people and entities being targeted lose their right to any assets held in the US. US companies and citizens are also forbidden from doing business with them.

The move comes as part of US President Donald Trump’s goal of driving Iran’s oil exports “to zero”.

Tehran has not yet responded to the move.

In August, the US went after a global network of companies owned by the Greek shipper Antonios Margaritis.

“Margaritis has leveraged his decades of experience in the shipping industry to illicitly facilitate the transportation and sale of Iranian petroleum,” the US Treasury claimed.