Tracking the world's efforts to punish Entities supporting proliferation in Iran

Updated August 30, 2012

As of this month, the United Nations, the United States and the European Union have hit over 400 Iranian individuals and organizations with financial penalties. This punishment, meted out in stages since 2005, has been the world’s main response to Iran’s efforts to develop long-range missiles and the ability to arm them with nuclear warheads. Most of the Iranian entities punished are linked to these efforts. Increasingly, however, governments are broadening the scope of sanctions in an effort to hinder Iran's overall economy -- targeting entities such as banks, transport and energy companies, and organizations and individuals linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The punishment has largely meant freezing the assets of the entities and prohibiting virtually all transactions with them. See the table below for a list of the entities targeted so far.

The United States, the United Nations, and the European Union have not all chosen the same targets. The U.N. Security Council has approved four sanctions resolutions requiring member states to freeze the assets of 120 entities; the United States has largely relied on an executive order targeting proliferators of mass destruction weapons to freeze the assets of 263 entities (1); and the European Union has implemented financial sanctions against 381.

• The United States has the broadest network of general restrictions prohibiting business with Iran, and has not shied away from designating most Iranian banks as well as key organizations like the IRGC, the Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), Iran's national maritime carrier. U.S. law also allows for sanctions against foreign firms that invest in Iran’s energy sector or that help Iran buy gasoline by providing shipping, insurance or financing (above a certain amount annually).
• The European Union has blacklisted the largest number of distinct entities linked to Iran’s nuclear and missile work, including a number of companies linked to procurement and manufacturing for Iran’s uranium enrichment program (31). Since 2010, the European Union has broadened sanctions by targeting a number of major banks as well as the IRGC, IRISL, and dozens of IRISL front companies (most also blacklisted by the United States). The European Union has also prohibited new investment in Iran’s energy sector, the supply of "key equipment and technology” to this sector, and is now considering an outright embargo on Iranian oil.
• The Security Council, impeded by foot-draggers like Russia and China, has preferred to target a limited number of well-known entities directly linked to Iran’s nuclear and missile efforts. The Council has designated only a handful of companies and individuals linked to the IRGC and IRISL, and only one bank. Despite Iran’s progress in proscribed nuclear and missile work, and mounting evidence of nuclear weapon-relevant projects, the Security Council is not expected to adopt additional sanctions in the near term. The last U.N. sanctions resolution was adopted in June 2010 – some two years ago.
  

The table below reveals who has been sanctioned by whom. A yellow-filled box indicates that no financial sanctions have yet been imposed; a date indicates when the sanction occurred. When available, each entity’s name is linked to a description of its activities (from the Iran Watch Suspect Entities database) and each date is linked to the authority for the designation (from the Iran Watch Library). Because many of the IRISL-related entities designated by the United States and the European Union are in fact shell companies (2), they have not been entered in the table or counted in the overall tally. Their names are referenced in the notes section at the bottom of this page.

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