Ali Rezvani (Rezvani) and Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour (Zabihpour) are IRIB “interrogator-journalists” who are both being designated pursuant to E.O. 13846 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, IRIB, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 13628, which was revoked and superseded by E.O. 13846. Furthermore, both have cooperated with the MOIS and the IRGC Intelligence Organization in extracting and airing forced confessions in the style of documentaries. Both feature prominently in the IRIB’s notorious 8:30 broadcast, which regularly airs forced confessions. In an IRIB segment in 2020, Rezvani interviewed Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian journalist who was kidnapped, brought to Iran, and later executed by the Government of Iran. Rezvani has also been implicated in the harassment of the family of an Iranian-American activist and was named as an interrogator in the case of Kavous Seyed-Emami, an academic and environmentalist who died suspiciously in February 2018 while in government custody.
Zabihpour, as the head of the foreign Persian language media group at IRIB, also has a long history of direct involvement in the broadcast of coerced confessions of dual nationals, civil society activists, political prisoners, writers, and religious minorities. In 2017, Zabihpour produced and helped broadcast for IRIB a documentary-style program that attempted to portray Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliff, a British-Iranian woman held prisoner by the IRGC on charges of “collaborating with foreign institutions” and “participating in the soft overthrow of the government,” as a spy. Zabihpour was also directly involved in the interrogation of three labor activists in 2019, which resulted in forced confessions broadcast as part of a film called “Burnt Plot.” One of the activists arrested stated that Zabihpour was in the interrogation room to prepare a text to be read in front of the camera after hours of physical and mental torture.
Recently, Zabihpour’s programming has targeted the Iranian Baha’i community in tandem with nationwide raids on Baha’i homes conducted by MOIS and other Iranian security forces. As part of the crackdown, MOIS agents entered a kindergarten and handed out Baha’i materials to teachers, who were then forced to say on camera that the materials had been distributed by Baha’is. Zabihpour produced a staged documentary style broadcast called “Detention of a Number of Central Members of the Baha’i Espionage Party,” in which she narrates about “unauthorized Baha’i kindergartens,” falsely incriminating Iranian Baha’is for infiltrating kindergartens.
Zabihpour was also instrumental in producing the November 2019 and July 2022 forced confession videos of Fatemeh Davand, a protester detained during the November 2019 protests, and Sepideh Rashnu, a 28-year-old writer who was arrested in July 2022 for opposing mandatory hijab.
In accordance with his May 8, 2018 decision to cease the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and to reimpose all of the U.S. sanctions lifted or waived in connection with the JCPOA, the President issued E.O. 13846 on August 6, 2018 to reimpose relevant provisions of E.O. 13574 of May 23, 2011; E.O. 13590 of November 20, 2011; E.O. 13622 of July 30, 2012; and E.O. 13645 of June 3, 2013, that had been revoked by E.O. 13716 of January 16, 2016. Consistent with guidance issued by the Department of the Treasury on May 8, 2018 , E.O. 13846 reimposes specified sanctions relating to Iran following relevant wind-down periods, i.e., on or after August 7, 2018 or November 5, 2018, depending on the activity involved. In addition, to provide clarity and consolidate relevant authorities into a single E.O., E.O. 13846 revokes E.O.s 13716 and 13628 and continues in effect sanctions authorities provided for in those E.O.s. E.O. 13846 also broadens the scope of certain provisions contained in those E.O.s, as outlined in FAQ 601 below.
