On 8 October OFAC designated six people, 27 entities and 22 vessels, mostly liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and bitumen carriers1. OFAC is the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a Treasury bureau that enforces sanctions. Five of those six people are Indian nationals tied to two Indian firms, among them the customs broker Samudra Marine Services. OFAC ties the sixth to Noorzad Petrokimya in Turkey.
The list adds three firms in the United Arab Emirates and two companies registered in the United Kingdom. General Licence EE, a blanket OFAC permission, gives counterparties time to unwind dealings with Samudra2. September's rounds went after missile buyers and a crypto exchange. With no Iranian crude loading in the Gulf, this round followed the gas and bitumen cargoes still at sea.
A week later OFAC named 16 people and 10 entities under Executive Order 13902, Trump's 2020 order opening Iran's economic sectors to sanctions3. They include five exchange houses in Qom, Tehran and Qeshm Island, and offshore banks registered at Chabahar and Kish Island. OFAC lists two designees, Sadegh Bavi and Sayyed Ruhollah Razavi, as citizens of Dominica, which sells citizenship to investors, with addresses in Dubai.
The two rounds were among three Iran actions the US Treasury took in ten days, two of them under the Operation Economic Outcast banner. The first came on 5 October, when OFAC issued a formal alert to foreign banks doing business with Iran4. All three ran through Treasury under existing executive orders, among them EO 13846 and EO 139025.
