US targets Iranian liquefied petroleum gas magnate with sanctions
Treasury says Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh’s shipments of LPG and crude oil help fund nuclear, advanced weapons programs, and regional terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis
WASHINGTON — The United States issued new sanctions on Tuesday targeting Iranian liquefied petroleum gas magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh and his corporate network, the Treasury Department said, amid ongoing talks with Tehran on its nuclear program.
Emamjomeh’s network is responsible for shipping hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian LPG and crude oil to foreign markets, the Treasury said in a statement.
Both products are a major source of revenue for Iran, helping to fund its nuclear and advanced conventional weapons programs, it said, as well as regional proxy terror groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Gaza’s Hamas.
“Emamjomeh and his network sought to export thousands of shipments of LPG — including from the United States — to evade US sanctions and generate revenue for Iran,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.
Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas are all avowed to destroy Israel. All four directly attacked Israel with missiles and drones over the past year amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, triggered on October 7, 2023, by the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to begin drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after talks that a US official described as yielding “very good progress.”
The US and Iran have held two rounds of talks, the first in Oman two weeks ago and the second in Rome last Saturday. A third round is set for this coming Saturday in Oman.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Iran previously as talks were underway.
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he and the Israeli premier “are on the same side of every issue.”
The call covered “numerous subjects including Trade, Iran, etc.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that it went “very well.”
In an early move after returning to the White House for a second, non-consecutive term, Trump reimposed his “maximum pressure” of stiff sanctions on Iran to pressure the Islamic Republic into negotiations about its nuclear program.
Efforts to settle a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, which it says is purely for civilian use but which Western countries see as a precursor to an atomic bomb, have ebbed and flowed for more than 20 years without resolution.
Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers — the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — during his first term of office in 2018, and also imposed stiff sanctions. Iran responded by dropping some of its commitments to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, but it has ramped up its enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity, which has no application beyond nuclear weapons, and has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities.
The Times of Israel Community.