The United States on Friday sanctioned four Iranian intelligence operatives behind a failed plot to kidnap a US journalist and human rights activist, Reuters reported.
"The Iranian government's kidnapping plot is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices, wherever they may be," said Andrea Gacki, head of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Targeting dissidents abroad demonstrates that the government's repression extends far beyond Iran's borders."
The sanctions block all property of the four Iranians in the United States or in US control, and prohibits any transactions between them and US citizens. Other non-Americans who conduct certain transactions with the four could also be subjected to US sanctions, the department added.
Those sanctioned include senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani as well as Iranian intelligence operatives Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori, the Treasury said.
In July, US prosecutors charged the four Iranians with plotting to kidnap Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who is a long-time critic of the Iranian regime.
Alinejad later told Fox News she had been targeted by the regime of then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for her work chronicling public beatings in the streets of the capital Tehran, and imagery of Iranian women's brave acts, such as removing their Islamic hijab – which is a high crime there.
She reiterated, however, that she is undeterred in her mission as a citizen journalist to expose the oppression and human rights violations of the Rouhani regime, which has since then been replaced by President Ebrahim Raisi, who is considered even more hardline than Rouhani.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)