The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has blacklisted four people for their affiliation with Iran.
They facilitated the transfer of millions of dollars between Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and Hamas’s operational arm, the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, to carry out terrorist attacks originating from the Gaza Strip, it said.
“OFAC designated Muhammad Sarur, Kamal Abdelrahman Aref Awad, Fawaz Mahmud Ali Nasser, and Muhammad Kamal al-Ayy for providing financial, material, technological support, financial or other services to, or in support of, Hamas,” the Treasury announced.
It pointed out that the financial facilitators are based in Lebanon and Gaza and are critical intermediaries between the Iranian regime and the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades and end users in the West Bank.
In partnership with the Sultanate of Oman, the Treasury sanctioned the four individuals under the virtue of a US executive order, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism.
Sarur, a Beirut, Lebanon-based Hamas and Hezbollah-linked financial operative, is in charge of transferring tens of millions of dollars per year from the IRGC-Quds Force (QF) to the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, it said.
“Overall, in the past four years, the IRGC-QF transferred over $200 million dollars to the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades.”
Awad, for his part, provides financial, material, technological support, financial or other services to or in support of Hamas, the Treasury noted.
In early 2018, Awad, a Gaza-based Hamas financial associate, coordinated with the same Gaza-based Hamas financial facilitator, leveraged by Sarur, to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits for Hamas.
As of early 2016, Hamas senior official Salih al-Aruri relied on Awad for detailed information regarding Hamas prisoners and payments to them, it said in a statement.
“Fawaz Muhmud Ali Nasser (Nasser) and Ayy provide financial, material, technological support, financial or other services to or in support of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad,” the statement read.
“Hamas’s continued violent campaign against innocent civilians and Israel is to the great detriment of the people in Gaza,” said Sigal Mandelker, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
“This Administration will not falter to hold Hamas and its Iranian leaders accountable for their violence.”
“The Treasury will continue to disrupt terrorist networks by targeting those who generate funds to carry out the Iranian regime’s violent agenda,” Mandelker added.
Hamas was designated by the Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in October 1997 and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in October 2001.
It was also listed as a Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT) in January 1995 in the annex to an executive order, which targets terrorists who threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process.
