The United States has imposed sanctions against Iranian officers who were allegedly involved in plots to target US officials in revenge for the killing of IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani.
The measures by Washington are part of a raft of penalties imposed by the US Treasury and State Departments against 37 individuals from 13 countries accused of violating human rights.
The implementation of sanctions and visa restrictions was announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday, ahead of Human Rights Day on Sunday.
Among those targeted are Iranian intelligence officers Majid Dastjani Farahani and Mohammad Mahdi Khanpour Ardestani, as identified by the Treasury Department. The officers are alleged to have played a role in recruiting individuals for US operations, including carrying out lethal actions against current and former US government officials in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani.
Additionally, the officers are accused of recruiting individuals for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities within the United States.
Iran vowed revenge after the US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani. The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York has not responded to requests for immediate comment on the recent sanctions.
Canada has also invoked a sanctions law targeting corrupt office holders to join forces with the US in taking action against officials in Russia, Iran, and Myanmar.
The sanctions specifically target individuals accused of longstanding human rights violations. The list includes two senior Iranian officials accused of overseeing the torture of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was killed in custody in 2003.
The latest sanctions fall under the Magnitsky Act. The law is aimed at penalizing corrupt officials and has only been employed twice since its passage in 2018.
Ehsan Khandouzi, speaking to university students, reluctantly admitted that successive administrations have mishandled the economy, but insisted that US sanctions imposed in 2018, wiped out economic growth and “led to today’s high inflation.”
“The sanctions during the Trump era caused the country's economy to decline, and inflation is now the legacy of the sanctions in recent years. These sanctions have affected the purchasing power of households,” Khandouzi insisted.
No one truly knows the real annual inflation rate, since the government stopped issuing periodic reports in 2019, but occasional figures announced by officials show that inflation is above 50 percent, and food prices have increased much faster.
Khandouzi referred to 2011, when he said the national income had reached an all-time high, but he did not mention that skyrocketing oil prices were the reason why the country had disposable income more than a decade ago. In contrast, currently there is not enough foreign currency to import raw materials for producing medications and people must go from pharmacy to pharmacy to find a can of baby formula.
One student asked the minister if “you want to drag everyone into poverty,” to which the minister gave a condescending answer. “When I was a student like you 25 years ago, I was also a critic, but one expects students to ask more sophisticated and analytical questions,” Khandouzi replied. He then went on to tell the students that the ministry of economy has set up a summer school and they are welcome to attend the courses and learn economics.
Meanwhile, the minister admitted that the Islamic Republic in the past 20 years has completely mishandled its banking sector and now several institutions are on the verge of bankruptcy. He also acknowledged that the government is afraid of protests if banks go under, and depositors demand their money. For this reason, the government prefers to dissolve these institutions into the Central Bank of Iran, a strange arrangement for any country.
However, Khandouzi did not mention that there no true private sector banks in Iran. The so-called non-governmental banks are in fact institutions set up by public entities or by regime insiders who have political influence and therefore have immunity from supervision.
Insider dealings became once again public scandals this week. A company dealing with tea imports misused up to $3.5 billion it received from the government at preferential rate of exchange. Instead of importing tea and machinery as expected, the company sold dollars on the open market at much higher rates. Despite pledges by top officials to investigate and address the fraud, so far, no prominent person has been detained. Some local media outlets say that without the complicity of top officials such a fraud would not have been possible.
At the same time, members of Tehran’s municipal council are asking about more than $300 in city revenues that has “disappeared”, meaning there is no trace of the money in budget allocations. This is a substantial sum of money in Iran, equaling 170 trillion rials.
The minister of economy did not address the corruption scandals during his meeting with the students. He tried to argue that the economy has improved in the past two years during the reign of hardliners. President Ebrahim Raisi also presented rosy figures to parliament earlier this week. One lawmaker commented after the meeting that “The president seemed to be talking about a different country.”
Reuters reported Thursday that deputy national security adviser Jon Finer has said that the Biden administration thinks the IRGC is behind the attacks, helping with planning and action.
"We believe that they are involved in the conduct of these attacks, the planning of them, the execution of them, the authorization of them and ultimately they support them," he told the Aspen Security Forum.
This is the first time the IRGC is directly linked to Houthi operations by a US official.
US National Security spokesman John Kirby took Iran to task on Wednesday for destabilizing the region by providing financial and military assistance to extremist militant groups, such as Yemeni Houthis.
“We know that the Houthis are supported by Iran, not just politically and philosophically but, of course, with weapon systems,” he stressed.
The Biden administration has been trying to avoid conflict with Iran ever since Hamas forces attacked Israel, fearing that the war on Gaza could expand and set the whole region ablaze.
A Politico report Wednesday suggested that senior Biden administration officials were against targeting Houthis for now, despite the marked increase in Houthi activities in the Red sea, which has forced two US warships to engage militarily.
On Wednesday, the USS Mason intercepted and shot down a drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area. Three days earlier, USS Carney shot down three drones after it received distress calls from vessels that had come under attack from Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea.
The Houthis say their attacks are in response to the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which began after Hamas rampaged Israel on 7 October, killing a thousand people.
On Thursday, the US treasury sanctioned 13 people and entities over claims they provided “tens of millions of dollars” in Iran-linked funds to Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“The Houthis continue to receive funding and support from Iran,” the under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism Brian Nelson said. “Treasury will continue to disrupt the financial facilitation and procurement networks that enable these destabilizing activities.”
Iran of course denies involvement in the missile and drone attacks by the Houthis on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea. The official line from the regime spokespersons is that militant groups linked with Tehran act independently.
Earlier in the week, a senior adviser to Ali Khamenei said the same about Hamas – that the group had the means necessary to plan and execute operations, notwithstanding the fact, he suggested, that Iran would help the group militarily if it had access to Gaza Strip.
Asked about the future of the conflict and the hopes for a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Kamal Kharrazi told Aljazeera, “this is their own business, of course. We have our own positions but we’re not going to dictate our positions to others.”
The former foreign minister of the Islamic Republic reiterated, however, that the regime didn’t “believe in” a two state solution. “Israel itself is not supporting this plan… and it’s not practical,” Kharrazi said, “We believe the final solution must be one state, composed of Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
The Islamic Republic has for long maintained this ambiguous, sit-on-the-fence politics, sending mixed messages on their intentions and their actions. In recent years, this has been largely helped by the Biden administration’s leniency, which many in Washington say has emboldened the regime and its proxies in the region.
“It [is] President Biden who refuses to respond to the recent attacks on American troops by Iran in Syria, in Iraq, in the Red Sea,” Senator John Kennedy told Fox News Thursday.
“The sad reality is that our enemies - China, Russia, North Korea, Iran - are not scared of President Biden. And for good reason," he said. “The Biden administration would rather debate whether man can breastfeed than protect the interests of this country.”
