US sanctions Indian and Turkish firms and individuals over alleged support for Iran
The US Treasury has imposed fresh sanctions on an India-based network accused of helping move Iranian oil and on a Turkish ground-services firm accused of aiding sanctioned Iranian airlines.
The United States Treasury has imposed fresh sanctions on companies and individuals based in India and Turkey over their alleged support for Iran, warning that it will continue to pursue anyone who assists the Iranian government.
The action, announced on Wednesday, is part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast”, a campaign aimed at cutting off Iran’s ability to sell oil to fund its war with the United States and Israel. Treasury officials presented the measures as the latest step in a sustained effort to squeeze Tehran’s revenues rather than a one-off penalty.
At the centre of the India-based designations is what Treasury called a “vast criminal network” run by Suniel Kumar Sharma, his wife Jaspreet Preeti Shahid, and two other Indian citizens who head two of the couple’s businesses, together with nine separate entities connected to Sharma. According to Treasury, their schemes provided false flags and certifications to sanctioned vessels involved in transporting Iranian petroleum, including vessels operating on behalf of the Iranian military and its proxies.
The Turkish designation targets Fugo Ground Services Inc, which Treasury said provided ground handling and other services to several US-sanctioned Iranian airlines that continued to fly to Turkey, including Iran Air Tour, Saha Airlines, Taban Airlines and Ata Airlines. The allegation is that the firm kept parts of Iran’s heavily sanctioned aviation sector operating despite the restrictions placed on those carriers.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US government would continue to go after anyone who supported Tehran, a message aimed as much at companies and banks elsewhere as at the firms named on Wednesday. The warning reflects Washington’s long-standing approach of using secondary sanctions risk to deter third-country businesses from dealing with sanctioned Iranian entities.
Alongside the designations, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a new alert to industry warning of the sanctions risk of dealing with potentially false-flagged vessels. That alert matters because shipping, insurance and certification firms are often the first to face enforcement action when a vessel’s papers do not match its real ownership or cargo.
Under the US sanctions system, designation typically means that any assets of the named people and entities within US jurisdiction are blocked, and that US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them. Foreign firms that knowingly do significant business with designated parties can also expose themselves to US penalties, which is why such announcements are watched closely by banks, shippers and insurers far beyond the countries named.
The measures come against the background of a war that began in February, when the United States and Israel launched a large wave of strikes against Iran. Since then, the economic campaign against Tehran has run in parallel with the military one, with Washington repeatedly adding shipping networks, traders and service providers to its sanctions lists.
For India and Turkey, the designations create a delicate problem. Both countries have extensive commercial ties with the United States and with the wider region, and firms operating across those markets will now have to review their exposure to the named network and to Iranian-linked shipping and aviation. How the two governments respond, and whether any of the named parties challenge the allegations, will be closely watched in the coming days.
What happens next will depend on enforcement and compliance. Treasury has signalled that further designations are possible if the networks it identified keep operating, and the alert on false-flagged vessels suggests shipping and certification are a particular focus. For now, the immediate effect is to raise the cost and the risk of doing business with the people and companies named, and to remind the wider market that Washington’s Iran sanctions campaign is still expanding.
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