Maritime Mutual Insurance Association (MMIA), a New Zealand-based marine insurer, provided insurance coverage to tankers moving sanctioned Iranian-origin and Russian-origin crude oil to buyers in Asia, including China, India, and Malaysia, according to a Reuters review of shipping and insurance records, oil trades, sanctions designations, and interviews. MMIA insured almost one in six tankers in the so-called “shadow fleet” that transports sanctioned oil while obscuring vessel identity and cargo origin, Reuters found. Shadow fleet vessels insured by MMIA included the Yug (formerly Mur), the Fenghuang (formerly Phoenix I and Minerva Zenia), and the Sunsea (Chembulk Tortola).New Zealand financial crime police searched MMIA’s offices on October 16 as part of an investigation conducted jointly with Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States into whether the insurer enabled sanctions violations and failed to deter money laundering and terrorism financing. MMIA is headquartered in New Zealand and has two affiliated companies in Dubai, MME Services and Maritime Reinsurance. Family members of its British owner are also linked to Maritime Management Administration Services in Guernsey and Maritime Pacific Insurance Services in the United Kingdom. The company Shiraz Marine claims on its website to be MMIA's representative in Iran. MMIA denies violating international sanctions.
News Briefs
October 28, 2025
-- Reuters
October 27, 2025
The Central Bank of Iran announced that it was dissolving the privately-owned bank Ayandeh Bank and merging it with state-owned Bank Melli. Ayandeh was founded by Iranian businessman Ali Ansari in 2013 through the merger of his privately-owned Tat Bank with two state-linked financial institutions, Salehin Credit Institution and Aatee Credit Institution. Ayandeh Bank grew heavily indebted and became insolvent.
-- Al Jazeera
October 24, 2025
Nearly 13,000 Iranian-owned companies are registered in Georgia as of June 2025, many of them clustered at a handful of repeat addresses in Tbilisi and the small villages of Dunta and Untsa, according to public records and an investigation by the Georgian nongovernmental organization Civic IDEA. Iranian consultancies advise Iranian businessmen to register companies near Georgian ports, rebrand Iranian-origin goods as “Made in Georgia,” and ship them onward to Western markets. Iranian firms have also supplied Georgian state entities: Qafrina LLC, owned by Iranian national Farzad Nouri, sold closed-circuit television systems to the National Bank of Georgia, courts in Kutaisi, and Tbilisi City Hall; another Iranian-owned firm, Geo Tech, provided hygiene products to the Georgian Defense Ministry, Georgian Railways, and Tbilisi’s municipal transport company, according to Georgian tender records cited in the article. Iranian-Georgian joint venture Green Lab LLC contracted with Georgia's National Center for Disease Control in 2019 to provide medical reagents and testing kits.
-- RFE/RL
Pakistani National Sentenced to 40 Years for Transporting Iranian-Made Advanced Conventional Weapons
October 23, 2025
Pakistani national Muhammad Pahlawan was sentenced by a U.S. court to 40 years in prison for transporting Iranian-made advanced conventional weapons for delivery to the Houthis in Yemen. From August 2023 to January 2024, Pahlawan made multiple smuggling voyages arranged and funded by two Iranians affiliated with the IRGC, Shahab Mir’kazei and Yunus Mir’kazei, and coordinated ship-to-ship transfers of weapons by sea using coordinates provided by them. U.S. Navy forces boarded an unflagged dhow in the Arabian Sea off Somalia on January 11, 2024, and seized the weapons, which included ballistic missile components, anti-ship cruise missile components, and a warhead. Pahlawan, the ship's captain, was convicted in June 2025 of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, providing material support to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), conspiring to and transporting explosive devices to the Houthis, and threatening his crew.
-- U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Virginia
October 20, 2025
Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said that Iran had cancelled a cooperation deal it had agreed upon with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September, according to Iranian state media. Iran had threatened to cancel the agreement if United Nations sanctions against it were reimposed through the 2015 nuclear agreement's snapback mechanism.
-- Reuters
October 18, 2025
The Iranian foreign ministry issued a statement saying that it considered all provisions of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement to be terminated. The foreign ministry statement said that Iran remained committed to diplomacy, but Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said earlier that Iran did not see a reason to negotiate with the three European parties to the JCPOA who triggered the agreement's snapback mechanism in August.
-- The Guardian
October 5, 2025
China has been paying for Iranian oil using a barter-like system in which oil purchases are repaid through Chinese state-backed construction in Iran rather than bank transfers, according to current and former Western officials. An Iranian-controlled seller affiliated with Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) books crude sales to a Chinese buyer affiliated with sanctioned state-owned trader Zhuhai Zhenrong. The buyer deposits funds with a secretive financial mechanism referred to as Chuxin. Chuxin disburses money to Chinese contractors building Iranian infrastructure that is insured by state export-credit agency Sinosure (formerly China Export & Credit Insurance). According to some of the officials, up to USD $8.4 billion flowed through the conduit in 2024.
-- Wall Street Journal
September 28, 2025
The United Nations reinstated sanctions on Iran at midnight GMT on September 28. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom had initiated the return of sanctions in August and failed to reach an agreement with Iran in the meantime to delay it. The restored sanctions include an arms embargo, a ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing, a ban on activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, asset freezes and travel bans on Iranian individuals and companies, and trade restrictions on items with nuclear or missile applications. U.N. member states are also authorized to seize and dispose of goods prohibited from being shipped to Iran. Iran threatened a response to the reimposition of sanctions, and Russia claimed that the renewed sanctions were illegitimate.
-- Reuters
September 25, 2025
Iran likely carried out an undeclared missile test at its Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Semnan Province on September 18, according to satellite imagery and Iranian social media videos analyzed by the Associated Press. An Iranian member of parliament claimed that the country had tested an "intercontinental-range" missile. Iran has previously used the same location to launch space-launch vehicles (SLVs) which share certain characteristics with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
-- Associated Press
September 24, 2025
Iran is rebuilding missile production sites damaged by Israel in June, according to satellite imagery analyzed by the Associated Press. The imagery indicates construction at bases for manufacturing solid-fueled missiles located near Parchin and Shahroud. Iran does not appear to have acquired replacements for planetary mixers that were destroyed by Israel in an earlier strike in October 2024. The mixers are large pieces of equipment needed to produce solid missile fuel. They can be purchased from Chinese firms, but the Chinese government did not indicate whether or not it would supply replacement mixers or missile fuel ingredients to Iran.
-- Associated Press