The Iranian government is sanctioning 24 U.S. citizens — including three retired generals and several top officials who worked for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump — as efforts to restart the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have stagnated.
On Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the list of 24 U.S. individuals hit with new sanctions, including:
- George William Casey Jr. – a retired four-star general who served as the U.S. Army Chief of Staff and commander of multi-national forces in Iraq.
- Joseph Votel – a retired four-star general who served as the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
- Austin Scott Miller – a retired four-star general who served as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan
- Richard Grenell – the former U.S. Ambassador to Germany for Trump
- Rudy Giuliani – Trump’s lawyer
- Wilbur Ross – the former U.S. Commerce Secretary under Trump
- Sigal Pearl Mandelker – a former U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury under Trump
- Justin George Muzinich – a former U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury under Trump
- Marshall Billingslea – a former U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury under Trump
- Sarah Bloom Raskin – a former U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury under Obama
- Jacob Joseph Lew – the former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Obama
- Dorothy Shea – the former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon under Trump
- David Melech Friedman – the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel
- Jonathan Shrier – the Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem (began under Trump and continuing under President Joe Biden’s administration)
- Joe Lieberman – a former U.S. Senator (D-CT) and leader of the group United Against Nuclear Iran
- Robert Toricelli – a former U.S. Senator (D-NJ) and alleged lawyer for the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (a group Iran has designated as a terrorist organization)
- Kenneth Blanco – the former head of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) (who served from December of 2017 to April of 2021)
- Michael Mosier – the former head of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and former acting head of FinCEN
- Matthew Epstein – the CEO of Kharon (an analytics firm that tracks financial crimes compliance programs)
- Benjamin Schmidt – Kharon’s chief product officer
- Howard Mendleson – Kharon’s chief client officer
- Benjamin Davis – Kharon’s chief research officer
- Marc Nakhla – a research deputy for Kharon and former senior OFAC officer
- Janice Gardner – Kharon’s executive editor and former U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush
“The designated persons, as indicated, have played role in supporting, organizing, imposing and also intensifying the imposition of the United States’ Unilateral Coercive Measures against the people and government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said. “And also in financing and supporting terrorist groups and terrorist acts against the latter and in supporting repressive acts of the Zionist regime of Israel in the region, in particular, against the Palestinian people.”
The new Iranian sanctions come as talks to restore the 2015 Iran deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — have reportedly stalled. According to Agence France-Press, the Iranian side has complained that the U.S. is “proposing and imposing new conditions outside the negotiations.”