The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced economic sanctions this Thursday (15) against agents of the Iranian regime and financial operators acting in the service of the Islamic dictatorship, due to the repression against demonstrators participating in protests that began in late December.
The most prominent name among those sanctioned was Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who OFAC described in a statement as being “responsible for coordinating the response to the protests on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader [Ali Khamenei] and publicly ordered Iranian security forces to use force to suppress peaceful protesters.”
Also targeted by sanctions were Mohammad Reza Hashemifar, commander of the Iranian Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) in Lorestan province; Nematollah Bagheri, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the same province; Azizollah Maleki and Yadollah Buali, commanders of the LEF and the Revolutionary Guard, respectively, in Fars province.
OFAC also applied sanctions against financial operators operating in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and the United Kingdom that would be used to launder oil money channeled to finance the repression against the Iranian population and terrorist groups supported by Tehran.
“The United States firmly supports the Iranian people in their call for freedom and justice,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.
The Treasury Department’s measures include freezing all assets of those targeted that are in the United States or in the possession or control of Americans; blocking of companies or other organizations that have a stake of 50% or more of those mentioned; and prohibition of persons in the United States or transiting through the United States from carrying out financial and commercial transactions with those sanctioned, except in the case of a license issued by OFAC.
According to international NGOs, more than 2,600 people have already been killed by Iranian security authorities and thousands more have been arrested in the repression of protests that began in late December due to the economic crisis in the Persian country, but whose demands now include the fall of the Islamic regime.
