US Imposes Sanctions on 39 Entities for Iran Sanctions Evasion

(MENAFN) The US government has announced its targeting of 39 entities in addition to five companies and an individual, who were sanctioned for their support of Tehran's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) efforts. The US Treasury Department stated that these entities constituted a "shadow banking" network, which provided sanctioned Iranian entities access to the international financial system while obfuscating their trade with foreign customers. The department argued that Iranian exchange houses created front companies abroad to enable trade on behalf of their Iranian clients and maintained foreign currency transactions via internal ledgers.

According to a statement by the US Treasury, this move followed a February 9 decision in which the US sanctioned nine companies in Iran, Singapore, and Malaysia for their role in the production, sale, and shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian petrochemicals and petroleum to buyers in Asia.

In a separate statement, the Treasury Department also announced that it had imposed sanctions on a China-based network of five companies and one individual for supporting Tehran's UAV procurement efforts. The agency argued that the network was responsible for the sale and shipment of thousands of aerospace components, including UAV-related ones, to Iran's Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA), which has been involved in the production of a certain UAV model that was used to attack oil tankers and exported to Russia.

The US Treasury further stated that Iran was directly implicated in Ukrainian civilian casualties resulting from Russia's use of Iranian UAVs in Ukraine. The Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian E. Nelson, said in the statement that the United States would continue to target global Iranian procurement networks that supply Russia with deadly UAVs for use in its illegal war in Ukraine. The US has issued six rounds of designations of individuals and entities involved in the production and transfer of Iranian UAVs since September last year, according to the Treasury.

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