The Treasury Department announced its Office of Foreign Assets Control will target and place sanctions on nine Iranian shadow fleet vessels and their owners who allegedly transported hundreds of millions in Iranian oil and petroleum to foreign markets.
“Today’s sanctions target a critical component of how Iran generates the funds used to repress its own people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Friday. “As previously outlined, Treasury will continue to track the tens of millions of dollars that the regime has stolen and is desperately attempting to wire to banks outside of Iran.”
Iranians have been facing the [longest, most comprehensive Internet shutdown](https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-international/ap-internet-shutdown-squeezes-irans-ailing-businesses-already…
The Treasury Department announced its Office of Foreign Assets Control will target and place sanctions on nine Iranian shadow fleet vessels and their owners who allegedly transported hundreds of millions in Iranian oil and petroleum to foreign markets.
“Today’s sanctions target a critical component of how Iran generates the funds used to repress its own people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Friday. “As previously outlined, Treasury will continue to track the tens of millions of dollars that the regime has stolen and is desperately attempting to wire to banks outside of Iran.”
Iranians have been facing the longest, most comprehensive Internet shutdown in the history of the Islamic Republic for more than two weeks.
The Internet outage, restricting access to information and negatively impacting some business owners, comes as demonstrations have erupted across Iran after the country’s rial currency experienced a steep drop causing inflation to spike.
Bessent said the sanctions are in response to the Iranian regime’s “brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors” and the Internet shutdown which he said serves “to conceal its abuses against the Iranian people.”
“The Iranian regime is engaged in a ritual of economic self-immolation—a process that has been accelerated by President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign,” Bessent said. “Tehran’s decision to support terrorists over its own people has caused Iran’s currency and living conditions to be in free fall.”
The Treasury Department announced new sanctions earlier this month against Iranian officials who called for violence against protesters. The Pentagon also announced last week that it was moving an aircraft carrier and its strike group that was in the South China Sea closer to the Middle East. President Trump referred to it as an “armada” in comments to journalists Thursday.
“The United States stands firmly behind the Iranian people in their call for freedom and justice,” Bessent wrote in a post on social platform X on Jan. 15.
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