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The United States of America tries to prevent the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guard from accessing funds to spread their “malicious” activities in the region, such as supporting the Assad regime and its violations against the Syrian people, the use of ballistic missiles against neighboring countries and support for terrorist groups, mainly Hezbollah.
A report by the US State Department revealed the illegal activities and tricks that Iran uses to finance its terrorist acts in the world, which threaten the security of the international financial system.
According to Chapter Four of the report, the Iranian regime uses shell companies and other types of apparently legitimate entities to transfer funds to terrorist entities in other countries.
The American report indicated that the Quds Force, the external arm of the Revolutionary Guard, established a network of companies to exploit the exchange market in the United Arab Emirates to buy and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars, and this network falsified documents and concealed their behavior behind legitimate acts, which led the United States to place 9 entities related to this activity. On horror lists.
In another scheme, the Quds Force used an apparently religious institution, the Organization for the Reconstruction of Holy Shrines in Iraq, to divert millions of dollars to further the interests of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Iraq, and served as a base that aided intelligence Iranian to send arms and ammunition to Iraqi militias loyal to her.
According to the report, officials of the Revolutionary Guard stole the funds of this organization and public donations destined to the construction of sanctuaries to finance their terrorist acts, so that last March Washington placed 9 people on terrorist lists linked to this organization, to slow down this road.
Exploiting Iraq
The US report added that illegal financing schemes for the Quds Force are being facilitated at the highest levels of the Iranian government, including the Central Bank of Iran.
He emphasized that since at least 2016, the Revolutionary Guard has received the vast majority of its foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Iraq, and senior Iraqi Central Bank officials have worked directly with the Quds Force to facilitate the transfer of funds to the Revolutionary Guard.
In 2017, the Revolutionary Guard oversaw the transfer of tens of millions of euros to Iran from the Central Bank of Iraq, and in May 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury revealed that the governor of the Iranian Central Bank at the time, Wali Allah Saif, and the deputy director of the international department at the Central Bank of Iraq conspired with the guards. Iranian revolutionary, to hide the illegal movement of funds in favor of Hezbollah.
The plan also included the election of the president and CEO of the Islamic Bank Al-Bilad in Iraq to act as an intermediary, allowing the transfer of funds to Hezbollah.
The report emphasized that this Iranian Revolutionary Guard scheme not only fueled terrorism, but also undermined the integrity of the financial system in Iraq, and thus economic growth and development in Iraq, so in May 2018 , The United States placed four individuals and one entity associated with this activity on terrorist lists.
Despite these moves by the United States to block the way for the Revolutionary Guard to finance their malicious acts, the Central Bank of Iraq continued to transfer several billion dollars and euros to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, transferring millions of dollars to the Houthis. and coordinating with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to transfer funds to Hezbollah, during 2018 and until 2019.
The Central Bank of Iran has also coordinated with the National Development Fund of Iran to provide the IRGC with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash payments, which is why Washington placed the fund and the Central Bank of Iran on terrorist lists in September. of 2018.
Currency counterfeiting
On top of all this, the regime deprived the Iranian people of oil revenues and used them to fund terrorist organizations loyal to it, and in September 2019, the Treasury Department unveiled a large oil transportation network that was managed and supported. financially by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah, and was supervised by a senior official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. And Iran’s former Oil Minister Rustam Qasimi was used to transport millions of dollars of oil to the Assad-Hezbollah regime.
The complex system of network intermediaries allowed the Revolutionary Guard to obscure its involvement, and the organization relied heavily on Hezbollah officials and front companies to mediate related contracts, so President Trump decided in September 2019 to place 16 entities and 10 individuals to stop these operations.
The efforts of the Quds Force to exploit the international financial system were not limited to using companies and organizations to finance their malicious acts, but went to the point of printing and counterfeiting coins, as happened in 2017, when it bought equipment from Germany that was used to counterfeit Yemeni currency to support the Houthi group and prolong the conflict, according to a report. United States Department of State.
A report by a team of UN experts in Yemen in 2019 found that the Iranians are using intermediaries to illegally send fuel to the Houthis, finance their war effort and perpetuate the conflict in Yemen.
Mahan Air
Iran’s commercial airlines, especially Mahan Air, play an important role in transporting Revolutionary Guard agents, weapons, equipment and funds that fuel regional conflicts. Because of this important function of the company, the Revolutionary Guard has orchestrated a vast conspiracy to circumvent US sanctions, which prohibit the export of parts. Aircraft parts for this company.
The plan included a number of front companies, and after investigating this activity, the US Treasury placed 9 individuals and entities on terrorist lists in May 2018.
Washington placed Mahan Air on terrorist lists in 2011 for supporting the Revolutionary Guard. Several countries in Europe and the Middle East have suspended the airline’s flights in recent years due to concerns about its activities.
Money laundering
In addition to all this, Tehran has not systematically implemented international standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, as defined by the FATF, and the Iranian regime has not fulfilled its obligations, so the FATF has identified Iran as high risk and uncooperative and has asked the FATF members. Take measures to protect the international financial system from risks arising from Iran.
Throughout 2019, the decision to comply with the FATF measures was discussed within Iran, and officials realized that further violating the standards would negatively affect legitimate transactions, and in March of the same year, a Ministry spokesman Iran’s Foreign Ministry said: “Not joining the FATF will make no doubt. Iran’s international trade is more difficult and, in some cases, impossible. “
From 2016 to February 2020, the FATF suspended its call for countermeasures against Iran in response to a high-level political commitment from the Iranian government to implement some reforms in a ten-step action plan, but the regime failed to implement 9 of the provisions. of the plan, prompting the task force. State to impose countermeasures on Iran’s financial system.
For more than 4 decades, the Islamic regime in Iran deprived the people of their country’s resources and exploited it in their terrorist acts, until the Iranians began to suffer many economic problems and the collapse of the currency, and they were carried out many demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the regime, dealing with it brutally and killing hundreds of them, the last of which was in 2019.
