Iran sanctioned 51 other Americans for being involved in the attack with a drone that, on January 3, 2020, killed the general in Baghdad. Qasem Soleimani and his companions, the Iranian Foreign Ministry reported this Saturday.
Among the new sanctions, whose names were published this Saturday in a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, are the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, Mark Milley, the US National Security adviser, Robert Charles O’brien Jr, US Deputy Under Secretary for Homeland Security Matthew F. Pottinger and the head of US Central Command (Centcom), el general Kenneth McKenzie.
The list of the 51 new sanctions also includes the founder of the private military firm Blackwater, Erik Dean Prince, and the former United States representative to the United Nations, Nimarta Nikki Haley.
“They have promoted terrorism”
The statement indicates that those sanctioned participated in the decision-making, planning, organization, financing, support, direction or implementation of the terrorist act against Soleimani or “by supporting this heinous crime, they have promoted terrorism that is a threat to international peace and security. ».
In October 2020 and January 2021, Iran had sanctioned several American officials for the attack on Soleimani, including Donald Trump, who was then president of the United States; his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, among others.
The new sanctions, like the previous ones, allow the confiscation of the assets of these individuals in Iran, according to today’s statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Soleimani, a former general at the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guardians (IRGC) Quds Force, was killed in a US drone bombardment on January 3, 2020 near Baghdad International Airport.
This list of sanctions is published in the middle of the negotiations in Vienna to rescue the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Iran and Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and the United States are indirectly trying to regain the agreement that limited the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions.