President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department is sanctioning an Iranian national and his corporate network for what Treasury says is the laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit petroleum products “to evade U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for Iran.”
Iranian shipping magnate Seyed Asadollah Emamjomeh has worked with companies affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to illegally transport crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas to foreign markets, according to the Treasury Department.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the military arm of Iran’s regime.
Emamjomeh is said to have violated Trump’s Feb. 4 memo restoring maximum pressure on Iran. The memo “den[ied] Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon, and counter[ed] Iran’s malign influence abroad.”
The Iranian national once attempted to transport liquefied petroleum gas from Houston, Texas, to China.
“Emamjomeh and his network sought to export thousands of shipments of LPG—including from the United States—to evade U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for Iran,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement. “The United States remains committed to holding accountable those who seek to provide the Iranian regime with the funding it needs to further its destabilizing activities in the region and around the world.”
The designation on Emamjomeh and his network freezes any U.S.-based assets from being used without authorization from Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The action requires that Emamjomeh’s property and interests in the United States be blocked, including the TINOS I, a vessel that intended but failed to load cargo in 2024 off the coast of Houston.
Treasury’s move will further restrict the Iranian regime’s support of terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas, as Emamjomeh’s shipping empire helped generate revenue for Iran’s “nuclear and advanced conventional weapons programs,” according to the department.
Violations of U.S. sanctions can result in civil or criminal penalties.
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