Jan. 16 (UPI) — The United States has sanctioned five Iranian security officials, a notorious women’s prison and a money laundering network in a sign of support for Iranians protesting their government despite bloody resistance from the Tehran regime.<\/p>\n
The Fardis Prison was blacklisted Thursday by the State Department, while the Treasury sanctioned Ali Larijani<\/a>, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security; four other security officials and 18 individuals and entities accused of being a so-called shadow banking network used to facilitate tens of billions of dollars of annual trade.\n<\/p>\n “The United States stands firmly behind the Iranian people in their call for freedom and justice,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n “At the direction of President [Donald] Trump, the Treasury Department is sanctioning key Iranian leaders involved in the brutal crackdown against the Iranian people.”\n<\/p>\n Thousands are believed to have been killed by security forces during the last 19 days of protests, which erupted in response to Iran’s economic crisis.<\/p>\n The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights nonprofit states<\/a> that at least 3,428 protesters have been killed with thousands more injured, while the Iran watchdog Human Rights Activists News Agency states<\/a> at least 2,677 people have been killed with 1,693 additional cases being investigated.\n<\/p>\n Both organizations state that some 20,000 have been arrested.<\/p>\n Trump has threatened to take military action against the Islamic regime, though he announced Wednesday that the killing and planned executions of detainees had “stopped.”<\/p>\n According to the Treasury, 67-year-old Larijani was among the first of Iran’s leaders to call for the use of violence to suppress the protests, and coordinated the security forces’ response on behalf of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We will continue to deny the regime access to financial networks and the global banking system while it continues to oppress the Iranian people,” State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said in a statement<\/a>. <\/p>\n The sanctions block all property in the United States of those named while prohibiting U.S. persons from doing business with them.<\/p>\n Mark Wallace, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and CEO of the United Against Iran nonprofit, applauded the sanctions against Larijani and others.<\/p>\n