The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on Iran's Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad and some Hong Kong-flagged vessels that are part of a shadow fleet that helps disguise Iranian oil shipments, the Treasury Department said.
President Donald Trump re-imposed a "maximum pressure" policy on Iran in February that includes efforts to drive its oil exports to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and funding militant groups.
Paknejad "oversees the export of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil and has allocated billions of dollars’ worth of oil to Iran’s armed forces for export," Treasury said in a statement.
“The Iranian regime continues to use the proceeds from the nation’s vast oil resources to advance its narrow, alarming self-interests at the expense of the Iranian people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
“Treasury will fight and disrupt any attempts by the regime to fund its destabilizing activities and further its dangerous agenda.”
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Treasury also designated owners or operators of vessels that have delivered Iranian oil to China or lifted it from storage there, it said. Those were in multiple jurisdictions, including India and China, it said.
Iran's military relies on a vast shadow fleet of ships to disguise shipments of oil worth billions of dollars to China.
Thursday's designated vessels include the Hong Kong-flagged Peace Hill and its owner Hong Kong Heshun Transportation Trading Limited, the Iran-flagged Polaris 1, the Seychelles-registered Fallon Shipping Company Ltd, and the Liberia-registered Itaugua Services Inc, Treasury said.
It also designated the Panama-flagged Corona Fun, which it said has manipulated automatic identification systems to disguise efforts to ship Iranian oil, and the San Marino-flagged Seasky, for transporting fuel oil on behalf of Iran's national oil company to China.
The sanctions block U.S. assets of the designated entities and prohibit Americans from engaging in any transactions with them.
The U.S. Department of State is designating three entities and three vessels as blocked property, it said.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
3 Comments
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GuruMick
USA just go away....come again another day ...next century would suit.
1/ Iran has the right to sell oil
2/ There is no evidence of nuclear weapons, unlike ,say, the USA and Israel.
3/One nations "proxy group' is anothers resistance group.
theFu
Tighten the screws on Iran. Eventually, the people will realize their leaders are the problem and throw them out. If they don't, then they don't need to be part of the free world economy. That's fine too.
Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. No doubt. They are trying to enrich uranium well beyond what is used for nuclear power generation and medical uses, which they achieved years ago. You can look up the enrichment levels for each, if you like. Do some research, please.
GuruMick
The Fu...any other countries you wish to "tighten the screws on "?
I little colonialist in thinking maybe ?
Yeah...the people were so much happier under the Shah....sarcasm alert.
Israel is a theocracy in many respects and they DO have nukes, hey lets tighten some screws there too.