Monday May 30, 2022
I've Been Thinking:

The US Treasury Department issued new sanctions against a list of Iranian, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Emirati and Lebanese citizens and entities that it said were linked to an oil smuggling network that provided funds for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah.

The Treasury Department said the network was led by current and former Quds Force figures, "backed by senior levels of the Russian Federation government" and included Chinese companies and a former Afghan diplomat. According to the Treasury, this network had raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran's Quds Force and Tehran's Lebanese allies Hezbollah, and helped Tehran support proxy militant groups.

The Quds Force is the foreign espionage and paramilitary arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and controls its allied militia abroad.

The Trump administration put the IRCG on the State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) in 2019, the first time Washington formally labeled another nation’s military a terrorist group.

The Biden administration has been engaged in indirect talks to restart a 2015 deal former President Donald Trump abandoned, under which world powers lifted international financial sanctions on Tehran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

According to an official statement issued by US State Dept: "While the United States continues to seek a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), we will strictly enforce sanctions on Iran’s illicit oil trade."

In a separate statement, referring to the Nuclear Deal, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: "While the United States continues to seek a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), we will strictly enforce sanctions on Iran’s illicit oil trade."

And Ned Price, the State Department Spokesman said: "The signal that we are sending is that we're not going to tolerate the illicit activities of the Quds Force, of other Iranian proxies, terrorist groups that receive Iranian support."

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