U.S. Sanctions Key Iranian Human Rights Abusers

Latest Developments

The Biden administration sanctioned 12 people on September 18 for their “violent repression” of the Iranian people, both within Iran and abroad. The sanctions, imposed in coordination with Canada and Australia, target commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basij militia; officials who run Iran’s prisons; and intelligence officials who play a role in Tehran’s efforts to assassinate Iranians overseas. The U.S. Treasury Department enacted the sanctions pursuant to Executive Order 13553, which then President Barack Obama signed in 2010 to punish those who play a role in “the commission of serious human rights abuses” against Iranians.

“The United States, along with our allies and partners, will continue to take action to expose and hold accountable those responsible for carrying out the Iranian regime’s cruel agenda,” said Bradley T. Smith, the acting under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Expert Analysis

“Despite failing to meet reporting and sanctions requirements as established in the MAHSA Act, a key human rights bill backed by large swaths of the Iranian-American community, the Biden administration is using authorities available to it to name, shame, and punish those in the clerical regime’s security forces and prisons. While necessary, these sporadic designations are not sufficient and must be paired with a high-level strategy that holds Iranian leaders, especially Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, accountable for their crimes.” — Behnam Ben Taleblu, FDD Senior Fellow

“The new sanctions are a welcome step, but they will ultimately exert little impact in the absence of a broader U.S. strategy aimed at defanging and ultimately removing the Islamic Republic from power. President Biden needs to complement these sanctions with a renewed campaign of maximum pressure that draws upon all elements of U.S. national power — political, military, and economic — to defeat Tehran’s regime.” — Tzvi Kahn, FDD Research Fellow and Senior Editor

The Targets

Washington’s new sanctions impact a range of officials from Iran’s regime, each of whom has played a unique role in crushing dissent through force. In particular, several of the officials helped violently crush protests during the national Iranian uprisings of 2019 and 2022. For example, the IRGC forces under Hamid Khorramdel’s command were responsible for “arresting and detaining protesters” and “coercing confessions from activists,” the U.S. Treasury said. Similarly, IRGC and Basij forces under Mustafa Bazvand’s command were responsible for “killing at least one individual and arresting several journalists covering the violence.”

Once arrested, protesters found themselves incarcerated in Iran’s notorious prisons, whose leaders subjected inmates to violence, torture, and execution. Under the leadership of Director-General Ali Abdi, the South Khorasan Province Prisons “executed prisoners without proper due process of law, and without prior notification to the prisoners’ legal counsel or family,” the U.S. Treasury said. Likewise, under the leadership of Director-General Alireza Babaei Farsani, the Isfahan Province Prisons subjected prominent Iranian rapper Toomaj Saleh to “torture or other ill-treatment for weeks,” with “the goal of forcing him into a televised confession.”

Iran has also sought to kill dissidents abroad. As deputy intelligence minister for internal security affairs, Yahya Hosseini Panjaki oversaw multiple assassination schemes, including the foiled plot to bomb an Iranian dissident group in Paris in 2018. Similarly, the head of the IRGC-Intelligence Organization’s Special Operations division, Javad Ghaffarhaddadi, orchestrated the killing of Stephen Troell, a U.S. citizen who worked in Iraq as an educator, in 2022. In August 2023, an Iraqi criminal court convicted five operatives and sentenced them to life in prison for Troell’s murder.

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