Trump administration sanctions major Iranian shipping network as it ramps up maximum pressure campaign

By Kylie Atwood, Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration is targeting Iran’s oil sales by sanctioning a vast shipping empire that is run by the son of a top political adviser to the country’s Supreme Leader, ramping up pressure on Iran following the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites last month.

“Today, Treasury is sanctioning more than 115 individuals, entities and vessels that make up a vast shipping empire controlled by Mohammed (Hossein) Shamkhani, the son of Ali Shamkhani, a top political advisor to the Supreme Leader,” Deputy Secretary of Treasury Michael Faulkender said.

“Hossein Shamkhani’s network, which controls a significant portion of Iran’s crude oil exports, has touch points around the world. It’s a clear example of Iran’s flagrant abuse of the international financial system, helping both the regime and Hossein Shamkhani himself generate billions of dollars.”

US officials said the Hossein network enables global sales of Iranian and Russian crude oil most often sold to China and said the penalties are the most significant sanctions imposed on Iran in recent years.

The move comes as President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has privately told people that pursuing Iran nuclear deal talks are no longer a short-term priority for the administration following the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, three sources familiar with the discussions said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration will continue to impose a policy of maximum pressure on the Iranian regime “until Iran accepts a deal that advances regional peace and stability and in which Iran forgoes all aspirations of a nuclear weapon.”

“Today’s actions underscore our resolve to target those who enable Iran’s illicit oil and petrochemical trade and to cut off the regime’s means of funding its destabilizing activities,” Rubio said.

Oil sale profits are a key source of revenue for the Iranian regime, which the Trump administration is seeking to drive down.

At the beginning of the year the Iranians were exporting about 1.8 million barrels per day, and most recent US figures show that Iran is now exporting about 1.2 million barrels per day, a Treasury official said. During the height of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign during Trump’s first term Iran was exporting hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, the official said.

Following the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, the US worked actively behind the scenes through intermediaries to re-start nuclear talks with Iran, CNN reported. But those talks have never been rescheduled, and efforts to re-engage have been put on the back burner.

“They would like to talk. I’m in no rush to talk because we obliterated their site,” Trump said in July.

In some conversations Witkoff has asserted that key infrastructure at the three sites targeted by US airstrikes was destroyed and it would take Iran ten years to be able to begin enriching uranium again, one of the sources said. That assessment from Trump’s top envoy appears inconsistent with the Pentagon saying that intelligence indicated that the program itself had been setback “one to two years.”

CNN has reached out to Witkoff’s office for comment.

Different US officials have also given their counterparts different assessments as to how long it could take Iran to begin enriching again in the weeks since those US strikes last month, ranging between three and ten years, sources said.

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