The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned 22 companies based in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey for helping sell Iranian oil and funneling the proceeds to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. The designations block all U.S.-linked assets of the targeted firms and expose foreign banks that deal with them to possible secondary sanctions. Treasury said the entities operate a “shadow banking” network that uses front companies and offshore accounts to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue, circumventing existing restrictions and financing Iran’s nuclear, ballistic-missile and regional proxy programs. “The Iranian regime relies heavily on its shadow banking system to fund its destabilizing weapons programs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. The latest action follows a July 3 round of sanctions that blacklisted a network led by Iraqi-British businessman Salim Ahmed Said, accused of smuggling billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian crude disguised as Iraqi since 2020, and targeted a Hezbollah-controlled lender, Al-Qard Al-Hassan, along with seven of its senior officials. Washington says the successive measures are part of an intensified campaign to choke off revenue streams that support Iran’s military apparatus and allied groups across the Middle East. All property of the designated parties under U.S. jurisdiction is frozen, and non-U.S. institutions risk being cut off from the American financial system if they facilitate significant transactions for the sanctioned entities.