Iran imposed sanctions on 51 Americans for participating in the January 3, 2020 terrorist attack that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and his comrades in Baghdad, Iraq.
Sanctions include US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chief Mark Millie, National Security Adviser Robert Charles O’Brien Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Matthew F. Pottinger, and General Kenneth McKenzie, Chief of Central Command (CENTCOM).
The list also includes the founder of the private military company Blackwater, Eric Dean Prince and former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.
According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the persons subject to sanctions participated in the decision-making, planning, organization, financing, support, leadership or execution of the terrorist act against Soleimani, or “by supporting a heinous crime, they contributed to terrorism, which poses a threat to international peace” and security “.
In October 2020 and January 2021, Iran imposed sanctions on several US officials for the attack on Soleimani, including Donald Trump, the then President of the United States, their Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, among others.
According to the same statement, the new sanctions, like the previous ones, allow for the confiscation of assets of suspects in Iran.
Soleimani, commander of the Al-Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed in an American drone bombardment near Baghdad International Airport.
The sanctions are being imposed as negotiations are underway in Vienna to save the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United States.
The pact, which limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions, was overshadowed by a US unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and Iran’s subsequent disregard for its commitments.
