The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Friday on Iranian government officials that it says were responsible for the regime’s violent crackdown on protesters.
The U.S. Treasury Department designated commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, financial backers of the IRGC and Iran’s interior minister, Eskandar Momeni.
“Momeni is responsible for organizing domestic security services and oversees the law enforcement forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose actions have led to mass killings, arrests and forced disappearances,” the department stated.
Mass protests broke out across Iran starting in December over Iran’s economic crisis and environmental concerns, including a severe water shortage in Tehran.
The regime has responded with brutal repression. The precise death toll is unknown, but activist groups attempting to verify casualties put the figure in the thousands, with other estimates in the tens of thousands.
“The number of demonstrators killed in Iran has overwhelmed local medical services, with morgues storing dead bodies in the streets and the corpses of those killed by Iranian security services stacked in pick-up trucks and freight containers,” the Treasury Department stated.
The Trump administration also imposed sanctions on Babak Morteza Zanjani, an Iranian businessman, and his two cryptocurrency exchanges based in the United Kingdom. One of those exchanges, Zedcex, has processed $94 billion in transactions, including for the IRGC, according to the Treasury.
Thomas Pigott, principal deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said the sanctions are intended to support the Iranian protest movement.
“As the Iranian people protest 47 years of catastrophic economic mismanagement, the regime continues to choose funding terrorist militias abroad and its vast weapons programs over the basic needs of everyday Iranians,” Pigott stated.
“The people of Iran suffer from rising inflation, crumbling infrastructure, and shortages of water and electricity because the regime is squandering their wealth on its malign activities,” he said.
