Tracking the world's efforts to punish Iranian proliferators

Updated April 7, 2009

As of this month, the United Nations, the United States and the European Union have hit a total of 175 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. The Iranian entities punished are all thought to be linked to these efforts.

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 U.S., the U.N. and the E.U. have not all chosen the same targets. The U.N. Security Council has approved resolutions requiring member states to freeze the assets of 76 entities; the United States has frozen the assets of 114 by executive order (**); and the European Union has implemented financial sanctions against 115, including all 76 designated by the U.N. The United States, with the broadest network of general restrictions prohibiting business with Iran, has not shied away from designating major Iranian banks as well as outfits like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, Iran's national maritime carrier. Yet U.S. action against Iranian individuals has lagged. The Security Council, impeded by foot-draggers like Russia and China, has preferred to target only some IRGC and MODAFL officials, not the entire organizations. Also, disagreement among European Union member states has slowed the E.U. process of targeting state-run Iranian banks – a move championed by the United States.

The table below reveals who has been sanctioned by whom, and why. 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).

Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control - Iraq Watch

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