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Iran Conflict 2026
18JUL

Russians named in IRGC arms network

2 min read
13:17UTC

OFAC designated a seven-node IRGC weapons network on 15 July and, for the first time in this war, named two Russian nationals directly.

← Back to US bombing moves inland as blockade hardensJump to analysis ↓
ConflictAssessed
Key takeaway

Treasury sanctioned an IRGC arms network and named two Russians, putting evidence behind claims of Russian support.

OFAC (the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control) designated a seven-node IRGC weapons-procurement network on 15 July under Executive Order 13382, citing Iran's attacks on commercial vessels in the strait of Hormuz. 1

For the first time in this war's Iran arms track, the designation names Russian nationals directly. Mariya Selina, head of finance at the Moscow aviation-transport firm Avratek OOO, was described by Treasury as a longtime procurement agent for Iran; her colleague Vadim Druzhbin was named for coordinating Iranian shipments. 2 Executive Order 13382 is the authority Washington reserves for weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferators and the financiers who fund them.

The action extends the sanctions track that named the Supreme Leader's Dubai financier Ali Ansari a week earlier , moving Treasury's aim from Iran's own money to the foreign supply chain behind its drones.

Naming Avratek's finance chief rather than a shell company signals that Treasury holds transaction-level intelligence on the money flow, not merely the logistics. Dmitry Medvedev's funeral-week praise for Iran's Hormuz leverage had been rhetoric; a designation tying a Moscow firm's finance head to IRGC drone procurement is a documented supply line, and it gives Washington grounds to reach further into Russian aviation firms under the same authority.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

OFAC is the part of the US Treasury that punishes people and companies by freezing their US-linked money and banning American firms from doing business with them. On 15 July it sanctioned a seven-part network accused of helping Iran's IRGC (the Iranian force running much of the war effort) buy weapons parts. For the first time in this network, it named two actual Russian people, Mariya Selina and Vadim Druzhbin, who work at a Moscow aviation company called Avratek.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

OFAC designations depend on a documented paper trail linking named individuals to a traceable corporate entity.

Avratek OOO's registration as a Moscow aviation-transport firm gave investigators that trail, something the earlier all-Chinese shell-company designations in this arms track lacked, which is why Selina and Druzhbin could be named by name while other nodes in the network remain anonymous.

What could happen next?
  • Precedent

    Naming individual Russian nationals sets a template Treasury can reuse against other Avratek employees or Russian firms it has so far left unnamed in this arms track.

Sources:Al Jazeera
Mentions:OFAC →US Treasury →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Avratek OOO →Executive Order 13382 →Ali Ansari →Dmitry Medvedev →Strait of Hormuz →The Atlantic →Moscow →Russia →Iran →Washington →Atlantic Council →Tehran →Dubai →
First Reported In

Update #155 · US bombing moves inland as blockade hardens

Al Jazeera· 18 Jul 2026
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