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Friday, April 4, 2025

US issues more sanctions over Iran drone program after nation’s president denies supplying Russia

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563 days ago
20230919
Iran’s domestically built drones and weapons are displayed in an exhibition in a military compound belonging to the Defense Ministry, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23, 2023. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on seven people and four companies in China, Russia and Turkey who officials allege are connected with the development of Iran’s drone program. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Iran’s domestically built drones and weapons are displayed in an exhibition in a military compound belonging to the Defense Ministry, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23, 2023. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on seven people and four companies in China, Russia and Turkey who officials allege are connected with the development of Iran’s drone program. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

The U.S. on Tues­day im­posed sanc­tions on sev­en peo­ple and four com­pa­nies in Chi­na, Rus­sia and Turkey who of­fi­cials al­lege are con­nect­ed with the de­vel­op­ment of Iran’s drone pro­gram.

The U.S. ac­cus­es Iran of sup­ply­ing Rus­sia with drones used to bomb Ukrain­ian civil­ians as the Krem­lin con­tin­ues its in­va­sion of Ukraine.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes af­ter Iran’s Pres­i­dent Ebrahim Raisi de­nied his coun­try had sent drones to Rus­sia for use in the war in Ukraine.

“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.

The par­ties sanc­tioned Tues­day by Trea­sury’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol in­clude: An Iran­ian drone com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly sanc­tioned in 2008, now do­ing busi­ness as Shahin Co., its man­ag­ing ex­ec­u­tives, a group of Russ­ian parts man­u­fac­tur­ers and two Turk­ish mon­ey ex­chang­ers, Mehmet Tokdemir and Alaaddin Aykut.

Trea­sury said the ac­tion builds on a set of sanc­tions it is­sued last March, when Trea­sury sanc­tioned 39 firms linked to an al­leged shad­ow bank­ing sys­tem that helped to ob­fus­cate fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween sanc­tioned Iran­ian firms and their for­eign buy­ers, name­ly for petro­chem­i­cals pro­duced in Iran.

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."

Among oth­er things, the sanc­tions de­ny the peo­ple and firms ac­cess to any prop­er­ty or fi­nan­cial as­sets held in the U.S. and pre­vent U.S. com­pa­nies and cit­i­zens from do­ing busi­ness with them.

Ten­sions be­tween the U.S. and Iran re­main high, de­spite the re­lease of five Amer­i­can de­tainees from Iran this week in ex­change for the re­lease of near­ly $6 bil­lion in frozen Iran­ian as­sets.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) —

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