US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announcing sanctions against Iran, January 10, 2020

UPDATE, 1015 GMT:

Iran’s Health Ministry has raised the official toll to 2,378 deaths and 32,332 cases.

The Trump Administration has brusquely rebuffed Iran’s appeal for the lifting of sanctions amid the Coronavirus crisis, imposing more restrictions on the Islamic Republic.

On Thursday the Treasury Department announced new sanctions on 20 companies based in Iran and Iraq, officials, and other individuals linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

The Treasury said in a statement that the blacklisted firms and individuals “provide support to or act for or on behalf of” the Guards and its Quds Forces, which operates outside Iran, and are “transferring lethal aid to Iranian-backed terrorist militias in Iraq such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq”.

The statement claimed that those sanctioned have smuggled weapons to Yemen during that country’s civil war, sold Iranian oil to the Assad regime in Syria, promoting propaganda in Iraq, and intimidated Iraqi politicians.

Among those targeted is the Reconstruction Organization of the Holy Shrines in Iraq, which the Treasury said is controlled by the Quds Forces.

The organization’s executive chairman, Mohammad Jalal Maab, is also on the blacklisted. He was appointed to his post in 2019 by Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander assassinated by a US drone strike outside Baghdad International Airport on January 3.

Coronavirus v. Iraq

The Iranian regime has used its central position in the spread of Coronavirus — with an official toll of 2,234 deaths and 29,406 cases — both to denounce the US sanctions and to appeal for their removal.

On March 20, marking Iranian New Year, President Hassan Rouhani apppealed to the American people to “make your Administration and Congress see that the path of sanctions and pressure has never been successful and will never be so in the future”.

But Rouhani was quickly checked by the Supreme Leader, who said Iran would never take US assistance and proclaimed that Coronavirus might be American “biological warfare”.

See also Iran Daily, March 23: Supreme Leader Proclaims US May Have Created Coronavirus

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration used US-Iranian conflict in Iraq to justify more sanctions.

The clash and contest for power in Iran’s neighbor has escalated since late December, when the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hezbollah stepped up rocket attacks on Iraqi bases with US personnel.

The Administration responded with the assassination of Soleimani. Both sides stepped back from war, but Kata’ib Hezbollah killed two US troops and a British medic two weeks ago. Trump and his advisors split over a retaliation of strikes inside Iran, settling instead for five attacks on ammunition depots of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias.