Iranian protesters carry placards that mock President Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, the day before sanctions were renewed. | Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images) foreign policy Trump administration slaps new sanctions to punish Iran and Syria

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions designed to punish both Iran and Syria and choke off illicit oil sales.

The new actions target Syrian national Mohammad Amer Alchwiki and his Russia-based company, Global Vision Group, along with seven other entities including a subsidiary of the Russian Ministry of Energy and a Russian employee who senior administration officials said participated in a scheme shipping "millions of barrels" of Iranian oil through Russia to Syria.


Administration officials said Tuesday that the scheme involved funneling money from Iran’s central bank through an Iranian company posing as a medical and pharmaceuticals business to a state-owned Russian bank account. That money was then used to assist Syria in paying Russia for oil. The oil ships would “routinely switch off their tracking devices to mask the fact that they are delivering illicit oil to Syria,” prompting Treasury to issue a maritime advisory to warn about the scheme.

The administration said that Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime then facilitated the movement of "hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars" to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps "for onward transfer to Hamas and Hezbollah" – groups designated as terrorist organizations.

“Today we are acting against a complex scheme Iran and Russia have used to bolster the Assad regime and generate funds for Iranian malign activity,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement, adding that "the United States is committed to imposing a financial toll on Iran, Russia, and others for their efforts to solidify Assad’s authoritarian rule, as well as disrupt the Iranian regime’s funding of terrorist organizations.”

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Noting that existing U.S. sanctions on Iranian products offer certain exemptions for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the administration has “zero tolerance for the use of seemingly humanitarian entities to disguise illicit transactions,” an administration official said, calling the scheme a “reminder about the lack of transparency in the Iranian economy.”

The new designations by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control represent "one of our most significant actions we’ve taken since our Nov. 5 re-imposition of sanctions" against Iran following the U.S. decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, one official said.

Administration officials on Tuesday also decried the scheme’s potential effects on the Syrian civil war, accusing the Iranian government of taking advantage of political instability in Syria for financial gain while undermining "legitimate" prospects for political resolution there. The network “further exacerbates the humanitarian crisis [in Syria] while enabling an authoritarian regime,” they said Tuesday.

The new sanctions, they said, illustrate how the administration’s “approaches to Iran and Syria intersect” and the network the administration uncovered serves to show that the Iranian government continues to prioritize supporting the Assad regime over helping the Iranian people, who officials emphasized the sanctions were not intended to hurt.

The administration also took a shot at Russia's role in the network, warning that if Russia would like to play "any kind of constructive, forward-leaning role" in Syria, "they’re gonna need to stop participating in this kind of illicit activity."

