The United States on Wednesday announced a new round of sanctions targeting Iran’s “shadow banking” network involved in the illicit trade of Iranian oil designed to fund Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said the sanctions will target 22 entities based in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey “for their roles in facilitating the sale of Iranian oil that benefits” the IRGC and Quds Force.
The front companies are designed to help Iran circumvent U.S. sanctions by using offshore accounts to facilitate payments from refineries purchasing the sanctioned oil, according to the Treasury Department.
Those funds, the department said, then get transferred to other front companies run by the IRGC and Quds Force, which feed the revenue back to the Iranian government “to fund its weapons programs and support its terrorist proxies and partners across the Middle East.”
“The Iranian regime relies heavily on its shadow banking system to fund its destabilizing nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs, rather than for the benefit of the Iranian people,” Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
“Treasury remains focused on disrupting this shadowy infrastructure that allows Iran to threaten the United States and our allies in the region,” he added.
Wednesday’s announcement marks the second wave of sanctions targeting the Iranian “shadow banking” network. The first round was announced on June 6.
The announcement comes less than three weeks after the Trump administration launched airstrikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, an operation U.S. officials have described as a military success.
