The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed sanctions on 12 Iranian officials serving in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s prison system.
“Despite the Iranian people’s peaceful calls for reform, Iran’s leaders have doubled down on the regime’s well-worn tactics of violence and coercion,” said Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith.
These Iranian officials have been sanctioned:
- Hamid Khorramdel serves as the commander of the IRGC’s Fatah Corps of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, which, under his leadership and in coordination with the LEF and the Basij, suppressed protests in 2019 and 2022 by arresting and detaining protesters.
- Mustafa Bazvand serves as the commander of the IRGC and Basij Resistance Force in Mazandaran province’s Babolsar county.
- Ali Malek-Shahkoui serves as the commander of the IRGC’s Golestan Corps of Golestan province. Troops under his command violently suppressed protests.
- Saeed Beheshti-Rad serves as the deputy coordinator of the IRGC’s Hazrat Nabi Akram Corps in Kermanshah province. Forces under Beheshti-Rad’s command were responsible for the violent crackdown on peaceful protestors during nationwide protests in both 2019 and 2022.
- Ali Abdi has served as the Director-General of South Khorasan Province Prisons since July 2022. During Abdi’s tenure, numerous prisoners at Birjand Central Prison in South Khorasan Province have been executed for drug offenses other than those that would allow the death penalty.
- Alireza Babaei Farsani has acted as the Director-General of Isfahan Province Prisons since June 2021.
- Ahmad Reza Azadeh serves as the head of Sepidar Prison and between 2019 and 2023 served as the head of Shiban Prison. During Azadeh’s time as head of Shiban Prison, prison guards on several occasions used live ammunition and tear gas on prisoners protesting inadequate conditions in the prison.
- Gholamreza Roshan has acted as the Director-General of Khuzestan Province Prisons since July 2022. In prisons under Roshan’s oversight, including Shiban Prison in Ahvaz, political prisoners have been subjected to torture.
- Yahya Hosseini Panjaki serves as the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) deputy intelligence minister for internal security affairs, where he oversees the Iranian regime’s efforts to assassinate Iranian dissidents abroad.
- Javad Ghaffarhaddadi serves the head of the IRGC-Intelligence Organization’s Special Operations division. The IRGC-IO has played a key role in targeting critics of the Iranian regime abroad, including the 2019 kidnapping of France-based journalist and political refugee Ruhollah Zam, which ultimately led to his execution in Iran.
- Hamid Zareikajosangi, is a field operative who is part of the IRGC-QF’s infamous Department 840.
- Zareikajosangiis being designated pursuant to E.O. 13553 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the IRGC-QF.
- Mahmud Baghlani is an IRGC affiliate.
