US Sanctions Iran’s Moral Police – 60 Minutes

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned Iran’s morality police “for mistreatment and violence against Iranian women and violating the rights of peaceful Iranian protesters,” according to the Treasury Department. announced on Thursday.

The sanctions followed the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by morality police after she was accused of violating Iran’s strict dress code for women by improperly wearing a headscarf. At least nine protesters were killed in clashes with Iranian security forces after Amini’s death on 16 September.

OFAC also imposed sanctions on the heads of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Army’s Ground Forces, the Basij Resistance Force, and other law enforcement agencies.

“These officials control organizations that routinely use violence to suppress peaceful protesters and members of Iranian civil society, political dissidents, women’s rights activists, and members of Iran’s Baha’i community,” the Treasury Department said in a press release.

These are the latest sanctions that the US has imposed on Iran. While some target Iran’s nuclear program, others target Iran’s support for terrorism. In the interview earlier this month with 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called the sanctions “tyrannical” and added that for us “it is important that the sanctions be lifted.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes that sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program would be lifted if Iran struck a new deal. As for the rest of the sanctions, which have plunged Iran into a two-year recession, cut off business from international banks and pushed the country’s inflation to more than 40 percent, Blinken was less specific.

“Iran knows very well what it needs to do,” he said.