November 19, 2021
The Biden Administration on October 29 almost doubled the number of Iranian people and firms sanctioned in its nine months in office, raising the total to 11 and showing how inactive it has been in sanctioning anyone.
The Biden Administration sanctioned two Iranians February 9 for human rights violations. On September 3, it designated four men implicated in an effort to kidnap Masih Alinejad from New York City for human rights violations. Most recently, on October 29, it sanctioned two Pasdar generals, one Iranian civilian and two Iranian firms for working on Iran’s drone program. It designated them for terrorism.
The two brigadier generals are Saeed Aghajani, the head of the Pasdar drone command, and Abdollah Mehrabi, the chief of research for the Pasdaran.
The Biden Administration has kept busy enforcing existing sanctions, but it has not been active adding new names of Iranians to the sanctions list. By comparison, the Trump Administration added 1,126 Iranian citizens and businesses to the list in 2020.
The Islamic Republic continues to charge the Biden Administration with adding new sanctions to oppress the entire Iranian public. But these individual sanctions do no more than freeze any sums the named people or businesses have inside the United States and bar Americans from doing business with them.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh also said October 29 that an administration that speaks about its intention to return to the JCPOA but continues the same policy as President Donald Trump “is sending the message that it is not trustworthy at all.”
He did not mention that the JCPOA allows the United States to impose new sanctions for human rights and terrorism violations; it just bars new sanctions for work on the nuclear program allowed under the JCPOA.
