The US State Department is offering up to $15 million for information that could disrupt financial networks supporting a drone-production arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Qods Force.
The company is identified as Kimia Part Sivan Company (KIPAS).
“KIPAS officials have conducted unmanned aerial vehicle flight tests for the IRGC-Quds Force and have provided technical assistance for IRGC-QF UAVs transferred to Iraq for use in IRGC-QF operations,” the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program said in its announcement on Monday.
The company has also sourced key drone components from foreign suppliers, according to US officials.
The IRGC has provided funding and weapons to groups outside Iran, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq. The US Treasury has linked the IRGC’s drone sales, including to Russia, to broader Iranian military financing.
In April, Washington sanctioned six senior KIPAS officials—Hasan Arambunezhad, Abolfazl Ramazanzadeh Moshkani, Mehdi Ghaffari Naghneh, Reza Nahar Dani, Abbas Sartaji, and Hadi Jamshidi Zavaraki—for acting on behalf of the IRGC-QF.
The Treasury had previously blacklisted KIPAS in 2021 for its role in supplying drones.
Under the sanctions, all assets linked to KIPAS and its designated officials within US jurisdiction are frozen. Financial institutions engaging with them could also face penalties.
The Trump administration listed the IRGC as a terrorist organization as part of his ‘maximum pressure’ after he withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.
Last week, Rewards for Justice offered a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the location, recovery, and return of Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran's Kish Island in March 2007.
The reward also included information "leading to the identification, location, arrest, or conviction of any person responsible for his disappearance."
Two Iranian intelligence officers (Mohammad Baseri and Ahmad Khazai) have been named by US authorities in connection to Levison's disappearance.
In 2020, the US treasury sanctioned Baseri and Khazai.
Mohsen Rafiqdoost, a former bodyguard of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and an architect of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), made the comments in a recently surfaced video interview.
A bank account in Frankfurt was used to channel money for covert operations abroad, Rafiqdoost said, including for the killing of a former Iranian military commander General Gholam-Ali Oveisi in Paris in 1984.
“We had an account under the name KM,” he said in the video published Monday by Abdollah Abdi, the editor of independent outlet Abdi Media. “The money in that account was used for actions outside the country that could not be done with ordinary funds.”
He also linked the account to proceeds from arms sales during the Iran-Iraq war, recalling how a weapons purchase in Spain left a surplus of $10,000. “That was the beginning of moving funds into that account,” he said.
Rafiqdoost’s statements follow remarks he made on Saturday to the Iranian site Didban Iran, where he said he oversaw multiple assassination operations targeting dissidents. He named several figures killed in Europe, including Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under the Shah, and Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a singer and outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic.
“The Basque separatist group in Spain carried out these assassinations for us. We paid them, and they conducted the killings on our behalf,” he said.
Rafiqdoost's office disavowed the interviews, chalking the reported comments up to mental deficiencies after surgery and media distortions.
"Mr. Rafiqdoost underwent brain surgery in past years, which resulted in extensive complications and may have affected his recollection of certain memories and names. Therefore, his statements are not legally or historically reliable," it said in a statement.
"Media judgments regarding his statements are inaccurate. Only the official narrative of the events in question can be considered valid."
Khomeini critic silenced
US-based former Iranian ambassador to Germany Hossein Mousavian expressed surprise at the remarks, saying in a post on X that he had believed for decades that Farrokhzad’s killing was the work of Iranian opposition groups.
“After 32 years, for the first time, I learned the facts of the case from Mr. Rafiqdoust’s interview,” added Mousavian, now at Princeton University, New Jersey.
Farrokhzad was murdered in 1992 in Bonn, Germany. At the time, Iranian officials denied involvement, while reports suggested a professional-style hit.
German police found Farrokhzad's body in the kitchen of his apartment. A switchblade had been driven into his right shoulder from behind, and a longer kitchen knife was lodged in his mouth.
In exile, Farrokhzad had become a fierce and outspoken critic of Iran's clerical rulers. He repeatedly mocked Khomeini, portraying him as an illiterate, superstitious figure with sexual fixations in his writings.
Farrokhzad’s murder is often considered part of the so-called Chain Murders in Iran—an series of assassinations that saw numerous dissident intellectuals and activists either disappear or be killed between 1986 and 1998.
The Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence later admitted responsibility for some of the killings.
Mousavian said the Iranian embassy had even facilitated talks for Farrokhzad’s possible return to Iran.
“My colleagues and I at the embassy worked diligently for several months with full capacity, sincerity, and conviction to obtain the approval of the relevant Iranian authorities for his return and security,” he wrote.
Human rights organizations have long accused Tehran of orchestrating assassinations abroad. In a report published in December, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center detailed four decades of extrajudicial killings tied to the Islamic Republic.
