United States Targets Iranian Financial Evasion Network with New Sanctions

The United States is holding Babak Zanjani and his extensive network accountable for enabling the Iranian regime to evade sanctions and finance its destabilizing activities, including support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This move increases pressure on Iran following its attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and regional neighbors.

Today’s action targets four individuals and nine entities linked to Zanjani’s operations. Zanjani’s re‑emergence as a regime‑linked financier—despite having previously received a death sentence in Iran for embezzlement—illustrates how far Iranian state‑affiliated elites will go to maintain access to the international financial system so they can enrich themselves, even as they mismanage the Iranian economy. The United States urges governments and financial institutions worldwide to refrain from engaging with entities connected to Zanjani or the broader networks that sustain Iran’s security apparatus. The Iranian regime remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, and for more than four decades has used the IRGC to sow instability in the region and beyond. We will continue to expose and disrupt networks that provide the regime and its proxies with the resources they use to undermine U.S. national‑security interests.

Today’s action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran’s financial, petroleum, and petrochemical sectors to restrict revenue that could fund Iran’s nuclear, missile and terrorist activities. For more information on today’s action, please see the Department of the Treasury’s press release.

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