Iranian Firms Penalized for Nuclear, Missile Ties

The United States yesterday imposed sanctions on five Iranian firms allegedly tied to organizations involved in the Middle Eastern nation's nuclear or missile work, the Associated Press reported.

NTI, The penalties, which include asset freezes and bans from access to U.S. financial networks, were significant because their adoption was timed between two sets of multilateral discussions including Iran, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, the New York Times reported.

The six world powers have sought for years to negotiate curbs on elements of Iran's nuclear program that could support weapons development, but the initial meeting held earlier this month in Geneva, Switzerland, promised little progress at follow-up talks planned for January in Turkey. Tehran has insisted it atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

“After the Geneva talks, there was a question: ‘What is the policy of the United States and its allies going to be?’” U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said. “It is clear that our policy is going to be to continue to impose pressure on Iran, so long as it defies its international obligations”.

The sanctioned entities included Moallem Insurance for insuring ships operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, Iran's state-owned cargo delivery company, AP reported (Lee, Associated Press).

Iranian vessels are already barred from purchasing insurance from organizations in London, the Times reported. Without insurance, ships can be seized at foreign ports over debt issues.

“All of a sudden, they have to think when they dock at any port, is this going to be safe for us?” Adam Szubin, head of the Treasury Department's Foreign Assets Control Office, told the newspaper.

“Today’s action, we expect, will compound those troubles,” he said, noting the recent seizure of five IRISL vessels after the Iranian company failed to pay back $500 million in borrowed funds (Landler, New York Times).

Pars Oil and Gas, said by the Treasury Department to be owned or operated by the Iranian government, was penalized under a recently passed law targeting sources of funding for disputed Iranian activities (Lee, Associated Press). International penalties have deterred many potential investors from dealing with Iran's energy sector, Levey said.

Ansar Bank, Mehr Bank, and the freight firm Liner Transport Kish were blacklisted for their dealings with Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Parviz Fattah, who heads the Iranian government-linked financial firm Bonyad Taavon Sepah, was targeted over his company's stake in the Revolutionary Guard.

"Both the [Revolutionary Guard] and [Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines] are major institutional participants in Iran's illicit conduct and in its attempts to evade sanctions," Undersecretary Levey said. "We will therefore continue to target and expose their networks" (Lee, Associated Press).

"This is part of the ongoing game of cat and mouse, if you will, between Iran and the international community," the Xinhua News Agency quoted State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley as saying yesterday. "We have significant sanctions on Iran. They don't remain static. They try to do everything that they can to evade these sanctions, and as they take actions, you know, we also take corresponding actions."

"We continue to look at what's happening in Iran and continue to sanction, you know, those entities that we think are controlled by the government and are directly related to, you know, their proliferation activities," Crowley said (Xinhua News Agency/iStockAnalyst, Dec. 22).

Meanwhile, the Sunni Muslim organization Jundullah said it could kill an Iranian nuclear facility worker it was holding hostage, Agence France-Presse reported today.

"We will execute this man after the Iranian authorities did not respond to our demands," which included the release of more than 200 Sunni and Baluch detainees and Jundullah members, organization spokesman Abdulrauf Rigi told Asharq Al-Awsat (Agence France-Presse/Zawya, Dec. 22).