US hits Iranian officials with new sanctions over protest crackdown

The US has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian officials over the crackdown on nationwide protests, Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, announced.

The measures, enforced by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), target those identified by US authorities as the masterminds behind Iran’s "violent" suppression of demonstrators, Caliber.Az reports.

Bessent emphasised that the US “stands firmly behind the Iranian people in their call for freedom and justice” and vowed that Treasury “will use every tool to target those behind the regime’s tyrannical oppression of human rights.”

Among the sanctioned individuals is Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security, who, according to the Treasury Department statement, was one of the first senior leaders to publicly call for "violence" in response to protests.

Additionally, OFAC designated 18 people and companies accused of laundering money from Iranian oil sales to foreign markets, linked to a "shadow banking" network of sanctioned Iranian financial institutions, Bank Melli and Shahr Bank.

"Shadow banking" refers to financial operations and entities that perform bank-like functions but operate outside the regulatory framework of the traditional banking system.

The protests erupted on Dec. 28 following the collapse of the Iranian rial, amid economic pressure intensified by international sanctions partly related to Iran’s nuclear program.

Although Iranian authorities have not disclosed official casualty or detention figures, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) estimates that over 2,600 people have died, including protesters and security personnel.

By Jeyhun Aghazada