Canada sanctions Iran research, delivery firms over supply of drones to Russia

MONTREAL, Canada — Canada announced Friday another round of sanctions against Iran, including a technology company that developed components of drones that the West says have been used by Russia to attack Ukraine.

“Canada will not stand idly by while the regime’s human rights violations increase in scope and intensity against the Iranian people… (and it takes) actions that continue to threaten international peace,” Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement.

In November, Ottawa had already sanctioned two Iranian drone makers, Shahed Aviation Industries and Qods Aviation Industries.

Added in this new round was the Baharestan Kish Company, which has contracted with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp to provide drone research.

Also making the Canadian sanctions list was Safiran Airport Services for having “coordinated Russian military flights between Iran and Russia, through which the Iranian regime transferred lethal Iranian-made Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Russia,” said the statement.

The United States had already taken measures against both companies.

The wreckage of what Kyiv has described as an Iranian Shahed drone downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine, September 13, 2022. (Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate via AP)

Ottawa also sanctioned the ultra-conservative Revolutionary Guards-linked daily Javan, accused of disseminating “anti-Semitic messaging and the Iranian regime’s propaganda.”

Brigadier-General Morteza Talaei, senior judge Ali Ghanaatkar Mavardiani and security forces commander Hassan Karami were slapped with sanctions too.