Tuesday, the United States announced penalties on seven individuals and four organizations in Turkey, China, and Russia who officials claim are involved in the creation of Iran’s drone program.
As the Kremlin continues its invasion of Ukraine, the United States accuses Iran of providing Russia with drones used to bomb Ukrainian civilians.
Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran, denied that his nation had deployed drones to Russia for use in the conflict in Ukraine, which prompted the most recent development.
“We are against the war in Ukraine,” President Raisi said Monday as he met with media executives on the sidelines of the world’s premier global conference, the high-level leaders’ meeting at the U.N. General Assembly.
A group of Russian component manufacturers, two Turkish money exchangers, Mehmet Tokdemir and Alaaddin Aykut, and an Iranian drone company doing business as Shahin Co. are among the parties Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned on Tuesday.
Treasury claimed that the move builds on a set of sanctions it announced in March, when it sanctioned 39 companies it claimed were involved in a shadow banking network that helped conceal financial transactions between sanctioned Iranian companies and their international customers, particularly for Iranian-produced petrochemicals.
Brian E. Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran’s “continued, deliberate proliferation” of its drone program enables Russia “and other destabilizing actors to undermine global stability.”
“The United States will continue to take action” against Iran’s drone program, he said.
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the State Department, said the U.S. “will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt these efforts and will work with Allies and partners to hold Iran accountable for its actions.”
The penalties, among other things, bar the individuals and entities from accessing any real estate or financial assets held in the United States and forbid American businesses and persons from doing business with them.
Despite the release of five American prisoners from Iran this week in exchange for the unfreezing of roughly $6 billion in blocked Iranian assets, tensions between the two countries remain high.
