WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday against six individuals and three companies it said were funneling millions of dollars to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, just days after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

FILE PHOTO: Steven Mnuchin, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury speaks at the Milken Institute 21st Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., April 30, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake

The Treasury Department, acting with the United Arab Emirates where front companies were located, said it had disrupted the large network’s operations, and accused Iran’s central bank of helping the group access U.S. dollars held in foreign banks to sidestep Western sanctions.

“The Iranian regime and its central bank have abused access to entities in the UAE to acquire U.S. dollars to fund the IRGC-QF’s malign activities, including to fund and arm its regional proxy groups, by concealing the purpose for which the U.S. dollars were acquired,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

The IRGC is by far Iran’s most powerful security entity and has control over large stakes in Iran’s economy and huge influence in its political system. The Quds Force is an elite unit in charge of the IRGC’s overseas operations.

The six individuals and three entities, including front companies for the IRGC-QF and currency traders, were sanctioned under U.S. regulations targeting specially designated global terrorist suspects and Iranian financial activity, the Treasury said.

The UAE said later it had placed the same companies and people on its list of terrorist and terrorist organizations doing business with the IRGC-QF.

The crackdown comes as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushes allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to pressure Iran to return to negotiations over its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump’s decision has given grace periods of 90 days to six months for companies to wind down their trade with Iran.

The Treasury Department said one of the companies sanctioned was also involved in retrieving oil revenue from foreign bank accounts held by the Iranian central bank for IRGC-QF activities.

In February 2015, Reuters reported that at least $1 billion in cash had been smuggled into Iran despite sanctions. Before it reached Iran, the cash was passed through money changers and front companies in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, sources told Reuters.

Before the 2015 nuclear deal was reached, front companies had mushroomed in Dubai to facilitate payments to Iran. The use of multiple front companies, which bought dollars from currency traders in Dubai and Iraq, was preferred as it concealed the overall size of the dollar-purchasing operation.</s>US pressures Iran with new sanctions over ‘malign activity’

The US has imposed sanctions on six people and three companies it says have ties to Iran’s elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the penalties targeted those who had funnelled millions of dollars to the group, funding its “malign activity”.

Iran’s central bank helped the IRGC to access US dollars via “a large-scale currency exchange network,” he said.

The Treasury Department said all six individuals were Iranian.

US individuals and entities will be barred from doing business with them following the move, which was carried out in conjunction with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The Iranian regime and its central bank have abused access to entities in the UAE to acquire US dollars to fund the (IRGC’s) malign activities, including to fund and arm its regional proxy groups,” Mr Mnuchin said in a statement.

“We are intent on cutting off IRGC revenue streams wherever their source and whatever their destination,” he added.

Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979, when the monarchy was overthrown and clerics assumed political control under supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Mr Khomeini quickly set up the IRGC to protect the state and defend the principles of his revolution.

It has since grown into a major military, political and economic force in the country. With thousands of troops and advanced military equipment, the Guards have been behind many of Iran’s key military operations.

The latest sanctions specifically target its elite overseas operations arm, the Quds Force.

In October, President Donald Trump labelled the group a “corrupt terror force and militia” and hit them with sanctions.

The new penalties come just two days after Mr Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal and pledged to ramp up pressure on Tehran.

The 2015 agreement curbed Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of UN, US and EU sanctions.

Mr Trump’s decision to abandon the deal was described as a “mistake” by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

What has Iran been doing?

 Israel accused the Quds Force of launching 20 rockets at its military positions in Syria on Thursday morning.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that four rockets were intercepted and 16 others fell short of their targets in the occupied Golan Heights.

Iran’s deployment of troops to the country to help President Bashar al-Assad has alarmed Israel, which launched a wave of strikes in retaliation for the attack.

The IDF said fighter jets struck 70 military targets belonging to Iran inside Syria, causing significant damage. Targets included intelligence sites, military posts and weapons storage warehouses.

Russia, Germany and France called on both countries to exercise restraint, but the US said Iran bore “full responsibility for the consequences of its reckless actions” and that Israel had a right to defend itself. BBC</s>The updated list of individuals subject to sanctions has been expanded with the names Meghdad Amini, Mohammad Hasan Khodai, Said Najafpur, Masud Nikbakht, Foad Salehi and Mohammadreza Khedmati Valadzaghard, which the US says are linked to the "Quds Force" of the IRGC.

After leaving the Iran Nuclear Deal, Donald Trump has threatened Iran with new sanctions, which has led to an escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The Russian foreign minister commented on the situation, saying it was unreasonable to disregard the interests of Tehran and its partners. He stressed that regardless of US unilateral sanctions, the lifting of the UNSC sanctions could not be changed.

"Speaking of unilateral US sanctions, we can’t do anything about it. However, it does not apply to the lifting of the UNSC sanctions, as this decision cannot be revisited," Sergei Lavrov said, following talks with his German counterpart Heiko Maas in Moscow.

READ MORE: US Withdrawal From Nuclear Deal to Strengthen Iran's Ties to Russia — Source

Trump also announced that he would re-impose US sanctions on the country. Following Trump's announcement, the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom expressed their regret over Trump's decision in a joint statement, stressing their countries' commitment to the JCPOA.</s>WASHINGTON—The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday levied sanctions against several Iranian firms, individuals and officials it said are operating an illegal currency-exchange network in the United Arab Emirates, and accused Iran’s central bank of being complicit in operations that funneled dollars into the country for Iran’s elite military unit, the Quds Force, and Tehran’s regional proxies.

The action, the first since President Donald Trumppulled the U.S. out of the landmark nuclear deal with Iran and Washington began reimposing...</s>WASHINGTON—The U.S. took a step toward cutting Iran off from the global economy on Thursday, levying sanctions on a financing network and accusing the country’s central bank of helping funnel U.S. dollars to the blacklisted elite military unit known as the Quds Force.

Acting jointly with the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on several Iranian firms, individuals and officials it said are operating an illegal currency-exchange network in the U.A.E.

The sanctions were the first since President Donald Trump this week pulled out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal and announced a return to economy-crippling sanctions against Tehran, and represented a move toward cutting off the Middle Eastern country’s access to dollars.

Read: How Saudi Arabia can plug the hole left by Iranian crude without wrecking the OPEC deal

But the actions Thursday only foreshadow the return of greater U.S. economic penalties as Washington reimposes sanctions that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear agreement. Iran’s central bank wasn’t formally sanctioned in Thursday’s actions, but will be in the coming months, under Trump’s plan to reimpose U.S. penalties.

The Trump administration is using sanctions—leveraging its economic heft and the dollar DXY, +0.00% as the world’s reserve currency—to pressure Iran, Europe and other nations into signing a new nuclear agreement. The Trump administration wants a deal that not only permanently restricts Iran’s nuclear program but also stymies its ballistic-missile efforts and curbs Tehran’s support for militants fighting across the region.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

How a firm that paid Stormy Daniels hush money became enmeshed in federal probes</s>The US has imposed sanctions on six people and three companies it says have ties to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the penalties targeted those who had funnelled millions of dollars to the group, funding its "malign activity".

Iran's central bank was also accused of helping the IRGC to access US dollars.

The Treasury Department did not name the sanctioned individuals, but said they were all Iranian.

The move - which was carried out in conjunction with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - prohibits US individuals and entities from doing business with them.

"The Iranian regime and its Central Bank have abused access to entities in the UAE to acquire US dollars to fund the (IRGC's) malign activities, including to fund and arm its regional proxy groups," Mr Mnuchin said in a statement.

"We are intent on cutting off IRGC revenue streams wherever their source and whatever their destination," he added.

What is the Revolutionary Guard?

The IRGC was set up in 1979 to defend Iran's Islamic system and is a major military, political and economic force in the country. The sanctions specifically target its overseas operations arm, the Quds Force.

President Donald Trump has labelled the group a "corrupt terror force and militia" and, in October, he hit them with sanctions.

The latest penalties come just two days after Mr Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal and pledged to ramp up pressure on Tehran.

The 2015 agreement curbed Iran's nuclear activities in return for the lifting of UN, US and EU sanctions.

Mr Trump's decision to abandon the deal was described as a "mistake" by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

What has Israel been saying about Iran?

Meanwhile, Israel has accused the Iranian Quds Force of launching 20 rockets at its military positions in Syria on Thursday morning.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that four rockets were intercepted and 16 others fell short of their targets in the occupied Golan Heights.

Iran's deployment of troops to the country to help President Bashar al-Assad has alarmed Israel, which launched a wave of strikes in retaliation for the attack.

The IDF said fighter jets struck 70 military targets belonging to Iran inside Syria, causing significant damage. Targets included intelligence sites, military posts and weapons storage warehouses.

Russia, Germany and France called on both countries to exercise restraint, but the US said Iran bore "full responsibility for the consequences of its reckless actions" and that Israel had a right to defend itself.</s>The U.S. Treasury on Thursday issued fresh sanctions related to Iran, two days after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

Six individuals linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force were sanctioned, according to the Treasury's website.

The Treasury also sanctioned three Iranian entities.

On Tuesday, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the landmark nuclear deal, which was signed in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany).

Acting ahead of a May 12 deadline, Trump opted not to extend sanctions relief on Iran, re-imposing nuclear-related economic penalties on Iran.

The 2015 deal had placed unprecedented restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

Trump had roundly criticized the agreement in 2016 during his electoral campaign, calling it the "worst deal" he had ever seen.</s>Iran's Long Arm: Who Is the Elite Quds Force That Attacked Israel From Syria

The Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force is charged with arming proxies across the Middle East and even the world – and is behind a number of past attempts to hit Israel</s>Just three days after pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal the US has begun to make good on President Trump's promise to increase sanctions against Tehran.

Along with the United Arab Emirates, the US Treasury Department has moved against six individuals and three companies it claims have close links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force (IRGC-QF).

It said they were responsible for funnelling millions of dollars to IRGC-QF. The Treasury department also accused Iran's central bank of aiding the group, some of which it said were front companies for the Revolutionary Guard based in UAE.

In a statement US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: "The Iranian regime and its central bank have abused access to entities in the UAE to acquire US dollars to fund the IRGC-QF's malign activities, including to fund and arm its regional proxy groups, by concealing the purpose for which the U.S. dollars were acquired."

The UAE said it had placed the same companies and people on its list of terrorist organisations doing business with the IRGC-QF.

On Tuesday President Trump announced that the US was pulling out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and called it "disastrous" and "one-sided".

The agreement was made by Iran and the US, the UK, Russia, France, China, Germany and the EU to ensure Iran's nuclear programme was "exclusively peaceful".

Mr Trump added that the accord - which he described as "an embarrassment" to him "as a citizen" - allowed a nuclear arms race to develop in the Middle East.

He then said pre-existing US sanctions on Iran would be reinstated, telling reporters: "Powerful sanctions will go into full effect.

"If the regime continues its nuclear aspirations, it will have bigger problems than it has ever had before."

It has been estimated that despite sanctions in place prior to the deal, at least $1bn in cash was smuggled into Iran through front companies in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.</s>Six years after SWIFT cut ties with Iranian banks during the last round of Western sanctions on the Persian nation, on Thursday afternoon the U.S. took another step toward cutting Iran off from the global economy when the US Treasury announced it was levying sanctions on a financing network and accusing the country’s central bank of helping funnel U.S. dollars to the blacklisted elite military unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force, the WSJ reported.

Acting together with the United Arab Emirates, the US Treasury said that it had sanctioned six individuals and three "front companies engaged in a large-scale currency exchange network that has procured and transferred hundreds of millions" of dollars to Iran's elite military force; overnight Israel’s government blamed the the same Quds Force for rocket attacks from Syria Wednesday night, an action that triggered massive retaliatory strikes by Israel’s military against Iranian targets in Syria, escalating the risk of a wider regional war.

In Washington, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin accused "the Iranian regime and its Central Bank" of misusing banking access in the UAE to acquire US dollars to fund the IRGC-QF's "malign activities, and to arm its "regional proxy groups." The new sanctions also ban US individuals and entities from doing business with the currency network.

Mnuchin alleged that the sanctioned entities had concealed the acquisition of funds and transfers: "We are intent on cutting off IRGC revenue streams wherever their source and whatever their destination."

“Countries around the world must be vigilant against Iran’s efforts to exploit their financial institutions to exchange currency and fund nefarious actions of the IRGC-QF and the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” Mnuchin also said.

Specifically, the Treasury accused an Iranian company, Jenah Aras Kish, of being a front for the Quds Force, and said the firm received oil revenues from Central Bank of Iran accounts and gave that money to couriers who exchanged it for millions of U.S. dollar notes in the U.A.E. through two Iranian firms, Khedmati & Co. and Rashed Exchange.

Washington has repeatedly accused the Iran Revolutionary Guard of backing terrorist groups and militias affiliated with Iran, including in Lebanon and Syria where missile warfare involving Israel and allegedly Al Quds unfolded on Thursday.

In February 2015, Reuters reported that at least $1 billion in cash had been smuggled into Iran despite US and other sanctions. In that case, the cash passed through money changers and front companies in Dubai, in the UAE, and Iraq. As we further reported in December 2015, the smuggling ring used gold as the key commodity used to bypass borders and monetary barriers, as well as middlemen in Turkey and the UAE where the chain of accountability led to the very top echelons of government in both nations.

The Treasury also accused Iran's central bank of being "complicit" in supplying the IRGC.

Thursday's actions foreshadow the return of U.S. economic penalties as Washington reimposes sanctions that had been lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear agreement. Iran’s central bank wasn’t formally sanctioned in Thursday’s actions, but will be in the coming months, at which point the entire nations will once again be blacklisted by SWIFT, making USD-based international transactions impossible.

And while Thursday’s action targets only one network, it is a model of how the administration plans to implement a complete ban on dealings with the Central Bank of Iran and dollar transactions coming due in the months ahead.

Incidentally, this time around, SWIFT may not need to even get involved. “There are secondary sanctions consequences for doing business with these entities,” said the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, referring to the currency-exchange network. Secondary sanctions are actions against companies that interact with blacklisted entities.

Because of Trump’s decision to reimpose broad U.S. sanctions, the use of U.S. dollar banknotes by Iran is banned after August, “and you can expect that we’re going to take that authority very seriously,” she said. “Foreign financial institutions, governments all over the world need to be on high alert to make sure that they understand the pattern and practice that these networks use to try to gain access to the USD.”

Meanwhile, western governments and companies - many of whom disagreed with Trump's withdrawing from the nuclear deal, have been trying to figure out how aggressively Washington plans to enforce its new sanctions regime against Iran, "wary of Treasury sanctioning European bank and firms, for example, if they continue to do business with Iran beyond deadlines for compliance approaching over the next six months."

For now, European officials have said they plan to stay in the nuclear deal with Iran, which may not only give license to their companies to maintain ties to Iran, but also may be setting up a diplomatic rift between the U.S. and its closest allies.

However, if and when the US imposes a few multi-billion fines on European banks, any willingness the EU has to bypass Trump's sanctions will promptly evaporate. Furthermore, Europe "doesn’t have the power to take important decisions," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament’s nation security and foreign policy committee. The "Europeans, by sanctioning Iran, seek to dance in front of the Americans."

As a result, it's only a matter of time before Iran finds itself locked out financially from the world.

Or rather the Western world, because as the US and Europe fade away as key partners for Iran, China is about to step in again.

As Bloomberg reported today, "to develop its $430 billion economy, Iran is being forced to rely on political allies in the east. Trade with China has more than doubled since 2006, to $28 billion. The biggest chunk of Iran’s oil exports go to China, about $11 billion a year at current prices."

China is “already the winner,’’ Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King’s College in London, told Bloomberg. "Iran has slowly abandoned the idea of being open to the West. The Chinese have been in Iran for the past 30 years. They have the contacts, the guys on the ground, the links to the local banks.’"

And they’re more willing to defy U.S. pressure as Trump slaps sanctions back on.

In short, the more Trump pushes Iran - and the broader middle-eastern region - to comply with the will of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the closer Iran will get with China whose influence in the middle-east, where it is ideologically aligned with Russia, will only grow...
In cooperation with United Arab Emirates, the United States Treasury implements new sanctions on six persons and three corporate entities having alleged ties to Iran's Quds Force.