IRISL was targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008 for deliberately blurring its activities in an attempt to circumvent controls of weapons proliferation. This included falsifying documents and using 'deceptive measures shroud its involvement in illicit commerce,' as a report in Foreign Policy magazine described it.
The new sanctions are aimed at making it more difficult for IRISL and its subsidiaries to continue to engage in activities the United States and UN deem illegal. A New York Times report last week detailed the extent to which IRISL has allegedly tried to shield its business through a network of shell companies since the U.S. government sanctioned the shipping line.
In the immediate aftermath of the sanctions, IRISL Director Mohammad-Hossein Daajmar said the line would work around the sanctions.
'Sanctions can be initially costly because of the need to set up mechanisms (to get around them) but these structures quickly turn into norms and business goes back to normal,' Daajmar told the Financial Times. 'It is a struggle but we are ready to fight and get around sanctions through appropriate measures.'
But the U.N. has determined that IRISL's efforts — including shifting the bulk of its fleet to new companies and renaming ships with innocuous-sounding western names — have worsened the company's record of deceptive practices.
'States must require their nationals to exercise vigilance over IRISL, a known sanctions violator,' according to a fact sheet on the sanctions provided by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. 'Three IRISL-related companies will have their assets frozen. States are requested to report any information on activities by IRISL and Iran’s Air’s cargo division to evade sanctions, including by renaming vessels.'
More broadly, the sanctions target all types of Iranian ocean-bound cargo.
Iran is subject to a new regime for inspection of suspicious cargo to detect and stop Iran’s smuggling,' the fact sheet said. 'States should inspect any vessel on their territory suspected of carrying prohibited cargo, including banned conventional arms or sensitive nuclear or missile items. States are also expected to cooperate in such inspections on the high seas.'
Meanwhile, a member of Iran's parliament said over the weekend that the country will retaliate in kind if the sanctions are enforced.
'Even if one Iranian ship is stopped for (a) security-check, we will act likewise and thoroughly inspect any (western) ship passing through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,' Hossein Ebrahimi, who is a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament, told state news agencies. 'The newly adopted resolution is much the same as the previous ones and has nothing new to offer.”
