IRGC 'Procurement Agents' Hit with Fresh Sanctions

On Wednesday, March 30, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions on an Iran-based procurement agent and his companies, which are said to have been supplying ballistic missile-making equipment to the Revolutionary Guards.

According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Mohammad Ali Hosseini used two firms, Jestar Sanat Delijan and Sina Composite Delijan, to provide the illicit goods to the Guards’ Research and Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization (IRGC-RSSJO).

The items included Chinese-made processing machines for nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), and an inert gas jet milling system, used to make solid missile propellants. OFAC said they were transported by the two firms using falsified shipping documents.

OFAC also newly sanctioned a Tehran firm called P.B. Sadr Company, which it said had acted as a key intermediary in buying propellant and centrifuge-making parts on behalf of Parchin Chemical Industries, an Iranian state-owned entity.

In its accompanying statement, OFAC said the action followed the IRGC’s recent missile attack on a cluster of buildings in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the “Iranian-enabled” Houthi missile attack on Saudi Arabian facilities in Yemen on March 25. These should serve, OFAC said, as “a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to pose a serious threat to international security”.