The U.S. State Department announced on Friday that it imposed sanctions on an Iranian company that it says is involved in the Islamic Republic’s chemical weapons program.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated that the Isfahan-based Hakiman Shargh Research Company is involved in chemical weapons research and development.
“The United States is designating the company for engaging or attempting to engage in activities or transactions that materially contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by Iran,” Miller stated.
“The United States will continue to counter any efforts by the Iranian regime to develop chemical weapons, including those that may be used by its proxies and partners to support Iran’s destabilizing agenda of inciting and prolonging conflict around the world,” he added.
Miller’s statement notes that since 2018, the United States has held Iran to be in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a 1997 treaty that bans the use or development of chemical weapons and to which both Iran and the U.S. are signatories.
“In 2024, the United States further assessed that Iran has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention due to its development of pharmaceutical-based agents as part of a chemical weapons program,” Miller noted.
Iran is one of four countries that Washington contends is violating the Chemical Weapons Convention, alongside Burma, Russia and Syria.
In March, the U.S. representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Netherlands said that a group of hackers published Iranian government documents revealing that the regime had weaponized the veterinary anesthetic drug medetomidine.
A 2024 State Department report states that those documents revealed that Iran developed chemical grenades to disseminate the drug.
A 2023 U.S. report said that Iran acquired “kilogram quantities” of more than 10,000 effective doses of medetomidine from Chinese exporters despite the Iranian institution purchasing the drugs having “little history of veterinary or even medical research” and the amount purchased is “inconsistent with the reported end use of research.”
Iran denies that it maintains a chemical weapons program.