WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on five Iranian ship captains who had recently delivered oil to Venezuela. Commenting on the move, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet: "The US is sanctioning five Iranian captains who delivered gasoline and its components to Venezuela. No one believes Maduro's claims of equal and fair gasoline distribution — these rogue regimes must stop squandering their people's wealth and resources with corrupt schemes." Meanwhile, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) put out a press statement on the action it took against the captains of the five ships that US-sanctioned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) used to deliver Iranian gasoline to the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela. These captains, who led five Iranian flagged tankers — CLAVEL, PETUNIA, FORTUNE, FOREST and FAXON — delivered gasoline and gasoline components to Venezuela, and are now added to OFAC's Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List (SDN List), the statement said. "The Treasury Department will target anyone who supports Iranian attempts to evade United States sanctions and who further enables their destabilizing behavior around the world," said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. "The Iranian regime's support to the authoritarian and corrupt regime in Venezuela is unacceptable, and the Administration will continue to use its authorities to disrupt it." In November 2019, the Iranian government imposed strict rationing and a 50 percent price hike on gasoline. When the Iranian people protested the abrupt overnight cuts in fuel subsidies, the regime's security forces brutally cracked down on the demonstrators, resulting in the killing of approximately 1,500 people, including women and children, according to the statement. Now, despite the government's decision to restrict the Iranian people's access to vital fuel, the Iranian regime has sent five tankers carrying over 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and gasoline components to Venezuela, with plans to continue gasoline sales to the brutal and corrupt Maduro regime in the months to come. While the Iranian people are forced to ration their fuel supply due to the Iranian regime's corruption, mismanagement, and global malign activities, the regime continues to support terrorist groups and allied dictators in Syria and Venezuela with the export of this critical product, the statement added. According to the OFAC, the five Iranian captains work for IRISL and NITC and, over the past month, have captained vessels identified on OFAC's SDN List as blocked property of IRISL and NITC, and have discharged shipments of Iranian gasoline in Venezuela.
