28JUL

OFAC clears 18 duplicates from the list

1 min read

09:28UTC

The Office of Foreign Assets Control removed 18 duplicate entries from the US sanctions list on 27 July. The underlying designations are unchanged.

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Key takeaway

OFAC deleted 18 duplicate sanctions records on 27 July; every designation behind them stands.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the US Treasury unit that administers American sanctions, removed 18 duplicate entries from its Specially Designated Nationals list on Monday 27 July as part of a modernisation exercise¹. Every underlying designation stays in force².

The SDN list is the register banks, insurers and shipping brokers screen against before they move money or accept cargo, and duplicates in it produce false matches that compliance teams then have to clear by hand. Removing them changes what a screening engine returns; it changes nothing about who is sanctioned.

The distinction is worth holding onto in a week when a delisting could be read as a concession. Treasury designated a network of Iranian firms linked to the oil trader Babak Zanjani under Executive Order 13902 on 24 July ; that was policy, aimed at named companies. Deleting duplicate rows three days later is maintenance on the register those designations sit in.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the agency that manages sanctions lists, removed 18 duplicate entries from its Iran-related sanctions list on 27 July. This was routine list cleaning, not a policy change: the people and entities still under sanctions remain sanctioned, only the duplicate paperwork entries were deleted.

Sources:US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control·US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control

Mentions:OFAC →Babak Zanjani →US Treasury →Iran →Executive Order 13902 →

First Reported In

Update #163 · Pentagon puts four dead back, renames war

US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control· 28 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Turkey

Golden Global Portfoy Yonetimi closed three funds to new money a day after telling regulators they were legally separate from its sanctioned parent, and the central bank held its rate at 37 per cent citing energy-driven inflation risk. Ankara is absorbing balance-sheet and monetary costs from a war it is not fighting.

Qatar

Qatar's foreign ministry said it was coordinating with China during a Beijing visit to restart negotiations, while filing hundreds of letters at the UN documenting Iranian strikes on its own civilian facilities. Doha is mediating for a neighbour it is also formally accusing, a contradiction the referral's clean vote count does not show.

China and Russia

China and Russia voted against the IAEA referral alongside Niger, and Iran's ambassador told the Board that inspections were impossible during a war Iran did not start. Beijing is separately mediating between Doha and Tehran, meaning the same power blocking the West's legal track is running the diplomatic one that might actually end the war.

Jordan

Jordan said it intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian ballistic missiles fired at its territory on 8 September, the war's first sustained salvo against a state that is not a combatant. Amman's 90 per cent interception rate held, but a tenfold jump in missiles fired in a single volley raises what the next one might carry.

United States

CENTCOM said its strikes disabled five Iranian tankers only after two failed missile attempts on a US warship, and Treasury moved the same week to a presumption of denial on all Iran licences. Washington now treats commercial shipping and financial plumbing as one enforcement front rather than two separate tracks.

Iran / IRGC

Iran's foreign ministry called the CENTCOM tanker strikes a war crime and a breach of the UN Charter, while the IRGC named two US destroyers it says it damaged without releasing images. Tehran expects the claims, unverifiable either way, to sustain domestic morale after losing five tankers in a single day.