US Move Easing Sanctions On Iran Internet May Have Limited Benefit

In a statement on its website on Thursday, the US the Treasury Department said its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating Iran’s Morality Police for abuse and violence against Iranian women and the violation of the rights of peaceful Iranian protestors.”

“The Morality Police are responsible for the recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and detained for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly,” it added.

OFAC also targeted seven senior officials of Iran’s Morality Police, the Intelligence Ministry, the Army’s Ground Forces, Basij Paramilitary Forces, and Law Enforcement Forces, who “oversee organizations that routinely employ violence to suppress peaceful protesters and members of Iranian civil society, political dissidents, women’s rights activists, and members of the Iranian Baha’i community.”

Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen said, “Mahsa Amini was a courageous woman whose death in Morality Police custody was yet another act of brutality by the Iranian regime’s security forces against its own people,” adding that “We condemn this unconscionable act in the strongest terms and call on the Iranian government to end its violence against women and its ongoing violent crackdown on free expression and assembly.” 

Head of the so-called morality police, Mohammad Rostami Cheshmeh-Gachi, and the commander of the Tehran division of forces, Ahmad Mirzaei, as well as Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib are among the sanctioned officials.

He was first blacklisted in 2011 as Iran’s prisons’ organization chief over “serious human rights violations.”

Gholam-Hossein Esmaili is sanctioned over his "complicity in the massive detention of political protesters and covering up abuses performed in the jailing system."

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He was the spokesman of the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic from 2019 until 2021, and served as Tehran Province’s chief justice from April 2014 until August 2019. The former prosecutor was appointed as the head of president’s office on August 8, 2021, the same day Raisi also named Mohammad Mokhber, the chairman of the powerful state-owned foundation sanctioned by the United States. 

Raisi – who is himself on US and European sanctions list – is currently in the US along with a large entourage to attend the UN Assembly, despite heavy pressure on the Biden administration to deny a visa for him. 

Raisi served as Iran’s Judiciary chief before becoming president in August 2021, but he spent most of life in the Islamic judiciary and is accused by human rights groups of taking part in gross violations of human rights. He was a member of a death committee that ordered the killing of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, an involvement he has proudly admitted.

Using commercially available data, the Commerce Department identified Boeing 747s operated by Mahan Air, Qeshm Fars Air and Iran Air transporting goods, including electronic items, to Russia in apparent violation of stringent US export controls on Russia related to its invasion of Ukraine. These are the first three Iranian airplanes identified, the department said.

The department has warned that any refueling, maintenance, repair, spare parts or services violate US export controls and subject companies to US enforcement actions.

Iran has publicly announced its intention to expand cooperation with Russia in the aviation sector by providing spare parts for its airplanes, the Commerce Department said.

The US and Ukraine have said that Iran has already provided military drones to Russia that are being used in the war.

With the additions, there were 183 aircraft on the list for apparent violations of US export controls. The three Iranian airlines identified Monday were already subject to a variety of restrictions by the US government.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod said US "controls, especially on items such as electronics and aircraft parts, have degraded Russia’s defense industrial base, severely restricted their access to the world economy."

"When Russia seeks to engage pariah states like Iran in order to backfill for what the international community has cut off, we will take action to thwart such attempts and disrupt such connections," he added.

Reporting by Reuters

Catherine Colonna said on the sidelines of the United Nations' General Assembly in New York that "There will not be a better offer on the table and it's up to Iran to take the right decisions," adding that there are no initiatives underway to unblock the situation. 

She reiterated that it was up to Tehran to decide now because the window to find a solution was closing.

She added that the United States and its European partners have similar positions on Iran’s demand for the International Atomic Energy Agency to drop its probe over uranium traces at three previously undeclared sites in Iran, the contentious issue that seems to be stalling a final agreement. 

In two separate interviews ahead of leaving Monday for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, where President Ebrahim Raisi is due to speak this week, he said Iran is ready to revive the agreement given guarantees that the United States and Europe will uphold it.

“If there were guarantees, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Raisi said. “The Americans broke their promises, they did it unilaterally…We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior we have already seen from them.”

Omid Khansari, a member of the board of directors of the southwestern province of Khuzestan’s Air Travel and Tourism Services, told ISNA that "Most of the planes owned by the airlines are grounded because they need parts and it is impossible to provide them due to the sanctions."

He added that only about 120 to 130 airplanes out of about 340 airplanes owned by the airlines are operational. 

Confirming the same data, Alireza Pakfetrat, the representative of Shiraz in parliament, said in August that due to sanctions the quantity and quality of Iran's aviation industry are decreasing day by day, noting that the number of passenger planes that remain operational have decreased as well as the number of flights in the country.

Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, also said last year that more than 50 percent of passenger planes are not working due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

Iran has suffered from shortages of civilian airliners since the 1990s and used a variety of ways to lease older planes or buy spare parts through intermediaries, but the technical state of its fleet has been deteriorating.

The 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) suspended sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft and Iran began talks to buy new planes from Boeing and Airbus. A few Airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved the sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018.