The United States on Friday issued new Iran-related sanctions following Iran’s resumption of attacks on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the Treasury Department said. The sanctions target Ali Ansari, an Iranian banker and businessman based in Dubai who had previously been sanctioned by Britain for his role in financially supporting the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, among other individuals and entities, Treasury said. Treasury described Ansari as a “key financier” for Iran’s new leader Mojtaba Khamenei, saying he had diverted publicly funded wealth into an extensive overseas portfolio of real estate and commercial holdings to enrich himself, government elites, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also targeted key Iranian exchange houses that it said moved billions of dollars annually on behalf of sanctioned Iranian banks, using layers of shell companies to obscure the government’s illicit financial activity. The fresh sanctions were announced on a day of relative calm after a week of renewed conflict, when three Qatari and Saudi commercial tankers came under Iranian fire, prompting the U.S. to hit Iranian sites, and Iran to respond with strikes on U.S. military sites in Gulf states.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones and Andrea Shalal, Writing by Christian Martinez; Editing by Katharine Jackson)