The United States warned governments and the private sector on Tuesday to crack down on what it described as Iranian efforts to exploit them to fund its support for terrorism, destabilizing actions in the region and rights abuses at home. The appeal, in a speech by the senior U.S. Treasury official for terrorism and financial intelligence, follows U.S. President Donald Trump's May 8 decision to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and to reimpose U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
"You must harden your financial networks, require your companies to do extra due diligence to keep them from being caught in Iran's deceptive web, and make clear the very significant risks of doing business with companies and persons there," Under Secretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker said.
"Companies doing business in Iran face substantial risks, and those risks are even greater as we reimpose nuclear-related sanctions," she added. "We will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account."