THE Trump administration is designating the head of Iran’s central bank as a terrorist and hitting him with sanctions intended to further isolate Iran from the global financial system.
The Treasury Department accuses Valiollah Seif of helping transfer millions of dollars to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group.
Seif is the governor of the Iranian central bank. He is being named a “specially designated global terrorist”, along with another senior official, Ali Tarzali, who works in the central bank’s international division.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Seif “covertly funnelled” money from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards through al-Bilad Islamic Bank in Iraq to help Hezbollah.
The Iraqi bank and its chairman is also being punished with sanctions.
The US says it is also imposing so-called secondary sanctions on Seif. That means anyone who does business with him could be cut off from the US financial system.
The move comes as Donald Trump’s administration, after deeming the 2015 nuclear deal insufficiently tough on Iran, seeks to construct a global coalition to place enough pressure on Tehran that it comes back to the negotiating table to strike a “better deal”.
The sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank executives are some of the first actions by Trump’s administration since pulling out of the deal to start ramping up that economic pressure.
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