Targeting Iran's Elites Who Fund Deadly Iranian Regime

In a sweeping move to defund the Iranian regime, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, designated more than 50 individuals and entities and identified more than 50 vessels that are part of the vast shipping empire controlled by Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani (Hossein).

Hossein, the son of Ali Shamkhani, a top political advisor to the Supreme Leader of Iran, leverages corruption through his father’s political influence at the highest levels of the Iranian regime to build and operate a massive fleet of tankers and containerships. This network transports oil and petroleum products from Iran and Russia, as well as other cargo, to buyers around the world, generating tens of billions of dollars in profit.

“The Shamkhani family’s shipping empire highlights how the Iranian regime elites leverage their positions to accrue massive wealth and fund the regime’s dangerous behavior,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.

Hossein’s network exerts control over a significant portion of Iran’s crude oil exports, the proceeds of which benefit his family and the Iranian regime. The Shamkhani family further exploits their ill-gotten wealth to obtain access to benefits unavailable to everyday Iranians, including owning exclusive properties around the world and obtaining foreign passports in exchange for substantial financial investments.

At the same time, the Department of State is designating 20 entities and identifying 10 vessels as blocked property for their involvement in the trade and transport of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.

Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani’s network comprises a vast fleet of vessels, ship management firms, and front companies, some posing as legitimate financial services firms, that launder billions in profits from global sales of Iranian and Russian crude oil and other petroleum products, most often to buyers in China.

Billions of dollars in income from the Hossein network’s illicit trade are transferred through a global network of front companies designed to disguise the trail back to Iran.

Hossein’s network is notable for the sophisticated techniques it uses for evading sanctions, laundering money, and obfuscating paper trails, insulating those responsible from culpability.

As a result of these sanctions, all property, and interests in property of the designated or blocked persons described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC.

“The over 115 sanctions issued today are the largest to-date since the Trump Administration implemented our campaign of maximum pressure on Iran,” said Secretary Bessent. “These actions put America first by targeting regime elites that profit while Tehran threatens the safety of the United States.”