Iranian shipping giant brought to its knees; Asadollah Imamjuma and his son placed on US blacklist

The US Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on an Iranian national and his network of companies for allegedly laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called illegal oil products “to circumvent US sanctions and generate revenue for Iran,” Energy Press reported.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the US Treasury Department alleged that Seyyed Asadollah Imamjoma, the head of the company, was transporting Iranian oil and gas to foreign markets. Imamjoma once tried to transport Iranian liquefied natural gas from Houston to China, but the attempt failed and his ship remains docked at a port near Houston.
According to the Treasury Department, Imamjoma’s shipping empire has helped generate revenue for “Iran’s advanced nuclear and conventional weapons programs,” as well as for resistance groups and its regional partners, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. Imamjoma was sanctioned along with his son, Maysam Imamjoma, and a series of international companies controlled by the two men.
“Imamjoma and his network sought to export thousands of shipments of liquefied natural gas, including from the United States, to circumvent U.S. sanctions and generate revenue for Iran,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said in a statement.
The sanctions are the latest in a series of sweeping moves by the Trump administration to cripple Tehran’s international oil and gas trade. They come as Washington is engaged in talks with Iran over its nuclear program, a move that has raised concerns among supporters of the “maximum pressure” campaign.
While most of the Trump administration’s recent sanctions have targeted Tehran’s crude oil trade, Imamjoma operates primarily in the liquefied natural gas sector, a lesser-known but still highly profitable sector. According to the Treasury Department, for more than a decade, Imam Juma and his son “operated a network for the sale, transportation, and delivery of liquefied petroleum gas using several companies based in Iran and the United Arab Emirates.” One of these companies, Caspian Petrochemical FZA, is part of an international network that “exported thousands of shipments of liquefied petroleum gas from Iran to Pakistan” and “conducted tens of millions of dollars of business on behalf of the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Trading Company.”