The United States has imposed new sanctions on Iranian individuals, companies and ships accused of supporting Tehran’s military activities, cyberattacks and illegal oil trade, the US state department said Monday.
The sanctions, announced on August 24, are part of US President Donald Trump’s ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ or ‘ economic D-day ’, an effort to seemingly cut off Iran’s lifelines.
The measures target networks involved in buying weapons, gathering intelligence, hacking US infrastructure and moving Iranian oil to generate revenue for Iran’s regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -Qods Force (IRGC-QF), department spokesperson Tommy Pigott has said. Deputy defence minister for industrial and research affairs Seyyed Mahdi Farahi was targeted over his role in weapons procurement. Reza Talaei-Nik, spokesperson for Iran’s defence ministry, was also sanctioned.
Pigott said this was coordinated with the FBI, which last week charged eight Iranian nationals over cyberattacks on US energy companies, defence firms, hospitals and government offices. The US said the money from these sales helped fund Iran’s IRGC and other groups linked to the Iranian government. Iran Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the US did not have the economic strength to restrict Iran’s ties with other countries. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said, “If the economic war continues, not a single drop of oil will be exported, neither through the Strait of Hormuz nor from anywhere in the Persian Gulf. He also said that Iran would consider any country supporting the US campaign against Tehran to be an “act of war.”
The US has also sanctioned an Iranian cyber group accused of hacking US critical infrastructure.
