A drone next to an Iranian ballistic missile (Reuters)

Yesterday, Friday, the United States announced new sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile and drone programs, and officials it said were involved in hacking American infrastructure, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Tehran.

The US Treasury Department said - in a statement - that it imposed sanctions on 4 companies, one of which is in Iran and the rest are based in Hong Kong, because they provided materials and technological tools for the Iranian ballistic missile and drone programs.

The Treasury also said it had imposed sanctions on six officials in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Cyber ​​Command for what it called malicious activities targeting critical infrastructure in the United States and elsewhere.

These new sanctions came in response to the killing of 3 American soldiers and the wounding of 40 others at a Jordanian base, in an attack that Washington accuses of carrying out what it calls Tehran’s agents.

The three companies headquartered in Hong Kong are FY International Trading, Dooling Technology HK Limited, and Advantage Trading Limited.

The fourth company is based in Iran, which is “Narin Sepehr Mobin Estates”, which is affiliated with the Peshtazan Kavush Kostar Bushra Company.

In a separate statement, the US Treasury said it had imposed sanctions on 6 officials in the Central Elections Commission of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

These six are Hamid Reza Lashkarian, Mehdi Lashkarian, Hamid Homayounfal, Milad Mansouri, Muhammad Bagher Shirinkar, and Reza Muhammad Amin Sabarian.

Judicial statement

In a statement, the American judiciary accused Iranian official officials and Turkish cadres of an energy group in Ankara of “laundering and selling Iranian oil to buyers linked to China, Russia, and Syria, to finance the Quds Force, which supports Iranian terrorism.”

For its part, the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Manhattan announced "the confiscation of $108 million that Revolutionary Guard companies were trying to launder."

He said in a statement, "Iran uses black market oil sales channels to finance its criminal activities, such as its support for the Revolutionary Guards, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups affiliated with them."

The imposition of the new sanctions coincided with the start of US air strikes in Syria and Iraq targeting factions close to Iran.

In a statement by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, he said that based on the directives of President Joe Biden, “our forces launched strikes on 7 facilities used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its affiliated militias.”

Source: Agencies