OFAC sanctions Iran ballistic missile network

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’) has sanctioned ‘an Iran-based procurement agent and his network of companies that procured ballistic missile propellant-related materials for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization (IRGC RSSJO).’

This, says OFAC, is the IRGC unit ‘responsible for the research and development of ballistic missiles, as well as Iran’s Parchin Chemical Industries (PCI), an element of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization (DIO).’ OFAC said it was also taking action ‘against a key Iranian intermediary involved in the procurement of parts used to develop missile propellant on behalf of PCI.’

It said that the action was in response to the Iranian missile attack on Erbil in Iraq on 13 March, and to the ‘Iranian enabled Houthi missile attack against a Saudi Aramco facility on March 25 as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’, which ‘are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to pose a serious threat to international security.’

According to OFAC, the procurement agent, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, used a network of companies, such as ‘Iran-based Jestar Sanat Delijan and Sina Composite Delijan Company,’ to procure ballistic missile propellant and related materials in support of Iran’s missile programme.

It said he has also been ‘personally involved in high-level meetings and traveled with senior IRGC RSSJO officials and, in his role as the manager of Sina Composite, procured processing machines for nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) from China using falsified shipping documents.’

It said that he had arranged for ‘the purchase and shipment of NBR processing machines, as well as an inert gas jet milling system from Chinese suppliers…jet mills, also known as fluid energy mills, are used in the production of solid missile propellant.’

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20220330