The U.S. Treasury imposed a fresh round of Iran-related sanctions on Wednesday, targeting what it described as the illicit oil-shipping empire of Iranian magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani and a Hezbollah-linked oil-for-gold laundering network tied to Venezuela. 

The sanctions, levied by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), strike at a multi-billion-dollar Iranian and Russian petroleum sales network run by Shamkhani, the son of the now-deceased senior Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani. U.S. officials have accused the Shamkhani network of using a layer of apparently legitimate shipping, logistics, consulting, and administrative firms to disguise operations that move sanctioned Iranian petroleum. 

Treasury identified UAE-based Oriel Group, Corplinx Consultancy, House of Shipping Investment, Shipstar Shipchandling, Helmatic Consultancy, and Taylor Shipping, along with Marshall Islands-based Shipza Shipping and UAE-based Meritron DMCC, as part of that infrastructure. The network uses shell companies to obscure its ownership of vessels that have shipped Iranian LPG and Russian petroleum product, transported under flags of convenience, according to the department. 

In parallel action, OFAC levied sanctions against Iranian national Seyed Naiemaei Badroddin Moosavi, whom Treasury described as a Hezbollah financier linked to the Quds Force arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  

Moosavi spent more than five years building a facilitation network to evade U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil by shipping crude to Venezuela in exchange for gold procured below market prices, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The gold was then sent back to Iran for the IRGC-QF as a financing channel for Hezbollah, including by moving it on designated airline Mahan Air to financier Ali Qasir in Tehran before smuggling it to Turkey for sale. 

Treasury officials also accused Moosavi of having direct ties to figures in former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime and taking over some of the financial-facilitation work previously handled by Alex Saab after Saab’s 2020 arrest. 

The sanctions come as part of a financial-pressure campaign the Trump administration is calling “Economic Fury,” according to Wednesday’s announcement. In a post to the social media site X on Tuesday, the department said it was “moving aggressively with Economic Fury, maintaining maximum pressure on Iran.” 

“Financial institutions should be on notice that the department is leveraging the full range of available tools and authorities and is prepared to deploy secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that continue to support Iran’s activities,” Treasury said in the post. 

Read the Treasury Department announcement here