International Port of Shahid Beheshti in Chabahar.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Any country having business dealings with Iran runs the risk of sanctions, the United States has said, noting that it is aware that Iran and India have signed a deal concerning the Chabahar port.

Responding to the India-Iran Chabahar agreement, “We are aware of these reports that Iran and India have signed a deal concerning the Chabahar port. I will just say, as it relates to the United States, U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place and we’ll continue to enforce them,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters at his daily news conference.

Over the last months, the U.S. has imposed sanctions to counter Iran’s activities, taking aim at its drone and missile programs, as well as its financing of groups like Hamas.

India and Iran on May 13 signed a 10-year contract, according to which India Ports Global Ltd. (IPGL) will invest about $120 million to equip and develop the Chabahar port terminal that India has been working on thus far as a means to build a trade corridor via Iran to Afghanistan, Central Asia and on to Russia. 

Chabahar agreement can be driver of Iran-India relations: Ambassador Iraj Elahi

A memorandum of understanding for the development of the Chabahar port by India was signed in May 2015. The contract was executed on May 23, 2016, during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Iran.

Chabahar is a deep water port located in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran. During the visit of Mr. Modi to Iran in May 2016, a trilateral agreement to establish the International Transport and Transit Corridor (Chabahar Agreement) was signed by India, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Washington:

The US ramped up its sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, designating four people and two companies it says were “involved in malicious cyber activity” on behalf of the country’s military.  

“These actors targeted more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear phishing and malware attacks,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement. 

The individuals and companies were working “on behalf of” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC), the Treasury said.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors continue to target U.S. companies and government entities in a coordinated, multi-pronged campaign intended to destabilize our critical infrastructure and cause harm to our citizens,” the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement.

“The United States will continue to leverage our whole-of-government approach to expose and disrupt these networks’ operations,” he added. 

Tuesday’s sanctions are the latest to be levied against Tehran by the United States and its allies for supporting anti-Israel proxies in the Middle East and for providing military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Last week, the US and Britain announced widespread sanctions against Iran’s military drone program in response to Tehran’s large-scale attack against Israel earlier this month. 

That attack came in response to an April 1 air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus — widely blamed on Israel — that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two generals.

A day after those sanctions were unveiled, the US fined a Thailand-based firm $20 million for more than 450 possible Iran sanctions violations.

They included processing close to $300 million in wire transfers for a company jointly owned by the National Petroleum Company of Iran. 

Alongside the Tuesday’s sanctions, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have also indicted the four individuals in question, “for their roles in cyber activity targeting U.S. entities,” the Treasury Department said.
 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)