The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday sanctioned eight people and four groups with ties to terrorism, including Hamas, “following the Oct. 7 barbaric attacks on Israel and its civilian population.”
“Today’s action targets additional assets in Hamas’s investment portfolio and individuals who are facilitating sanctions evasion by Hamas-affiliated companies,” stated the department, which also designated “a Hamas official in Iran” and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and “a Gaza-based entity that has served as a conduit for illicit Iranian funds to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”
Neither Treasury nor the U.S. State Department, which noted that those sanctioned include “officials involved in financing and training Hamas” and “individuals and entities” who “played key roles in facilitating sanctions evasion by Hamas-affiliated companies,” said that Iran played any direct role in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Although reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have suggested otherwise, as have analysts and Israeli intelligence reports, the Biden administration has maintained that Iran did not have a direct role in planning or carrying out the attacks.
“As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the designated persons … that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported,” stated the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. “In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50% or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.”
Those sanctioned for ties to Iranian-sponsored terror are Khaled Qaddoumi, a Jordanian national who serves as Hamas’s liaison in Iran; Ali Morshed Shirazi and Mostafa Mohammad Khani, IRGC Quds Force officials “who train and assist PIJ, Hamas and Hezbollah”; Ali Ahmad Faizullahi, an IRGC commander in Iran; Nasser Al Sheikh Ali, director of the Al-Ansar Charity Association, which funds families of Hamas and other terrorists through the Martyrs Foundation and has Iranian ties.
The Treasury Department on Friday also sanctioned the Sudan-based Zawaya Group for Development and Investment Company, Spain-based Zawaya Group for Development Investment Sociedad Limitada and Sudan-based Larrycom for Investment Company, all owned by Abdelbasit Hamza Elhassan Mohamed Khair, whom the department designated along with nine other Hamas financiers on Oct. 18.
It also designated Alaeddin Senguler, Gulsah Yigidoglu and Arwa Mangoush, the Turkey-based primary shareholders of Trend GYO, which the Treasury Department “designated in May 2022 as part of Hamas’s investment portfolio,” which the department stated “is a key component of Hamas’s global asset holdings which had previously been estimated to be worth over $500 million.”
