Move targets vessels used by Iran to generate ‘funds used to repress its own people’, US treasury secretary says.
Published On 23 Jan 2026
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The United States has imposed a new series of sanctions related to Iran, targeting the so-called “shadow fleet” it said Tehran uses to support its oil exports.
In statements on Friday, the US officials directly tied the sanctions on the nine vessels and their respective owners or management firms to the government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.
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The department said the fleet “collectively transported hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil and petroleum products to foreign markets”. It is alleged that revenue from these products is being diverted to fund “regional terrorist proxies, weapons programs, and security services”.
In a statement, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the actions “target a critical component of how Iran generates the funds used to repress its own people”.
“Treasury will continue to track the tens of millions of dollars that the regime has stolen and is desperately attempting to wire to banks outside of Iran,” he added.
Department of State spokesperson Tommy Pigott, meanwhile, said the sanctions will constrain “its ability to bankroll the repression of Iranians and international malign behaviour”.
Iranian state television has reported that 3,117 people were killed during the crackdown on demonstrations, which were initially sparked by shopkeepers protesting the high cost of living. They soon spread into a wider antigovernment.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has said 4,519 were killed during the wave of demonstrations, including 4,251 protesters, 197 security personnel, 35 people aged under 18 and 38 bystanders who it says were neither protesters nor security personnel.
Iran has promised harsh sentences for the hundreds of people arrested during the demonstrations.
Amid the unrest, US President Donald Trump had threatened to strike Iran in response to the killings, but later backed away from the threats as protests appeared to ebb. Nevertheless, Trump said late Thursday that the US was sending a large naval force to the region.
“We’re watching Iran,” he told reporters.
On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council held an emergency session on Iran, with High Commissioner Volker Turk calling on leaders in Tehran to “end their brutal repression”.
Payam Akhavan, a former UN prosecutor of Iranian-Canadian descent, described the government killings as the “worst mass murder in the contemporary history of Iran”.
The 47-member body then voted with 25 in favour, seven opposed, and the rest abstaining, for a resolution extending and broadening the mandate of independent investigators gathering information on rights violations in Iran.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said Tehran “does not recognise the legitimacy or validity of this special session and its subsequent resolution”.
