US sanctions Iranian officials over executions of protesters

The United States has announced another round of sanctions against Iranian government officials, following the Iranian regime’s recent executions of prosecutors.

The US Department of the Treasury said in a statement on Wednesday, December 21, that it was targeting organisations and government figures involved in the government’s crackdown on protesters.

The people to be sanctioned include Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri for his involvement in a protest-related execution.

“The case of the first executed protestor, a young man named Mohsen Shekari, proceeded with little resemblance to a meaningful trial,” the Treasury said in a news release on Wednesday, adding that Montazeri had “issued a directive to courts to act ‘decisively’ and issue harsh sentences to many of those arrested during the ongoing protests.”

“Today’s action targets the senior official overseeing the prosecution of protestors, as well as leaders of military and paramilitary organizations violently cracking down and detaining protestors and a company that procures and provides security forces with tools of suppression,” the release said.

The Imen Sanat Zaman Fara company has been designated by the US because it makes equipment used by Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF), a group that has been deployed by the government to suppress protests in areas where the government has been accused of some of its harshest alleged abuses.

Iran has pushed back against criticism of its human rights record and accused the US of using double standards to score points against a country seen as a US rival.

While the US government has used a series of sanctions to step up pressure on the Iranian government, which has responded to protests throughout the country challenging Iran’s clerical regime with a repressive crackdown.

According to human rights groups outside Iran, several hundred people have been killed since protests broke out in September following the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody in September after being arrested by the country’s “morality police”.

The Iranian government carried out its second protest-related execution earlier this month, putting a man named Majidreza Rahnavard to death for allegedly killing two members of the security forces.