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Forty years later, neither Americans nor Iranians have forgotten those events.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, a senior US official characterized Iran’s “so-called democracy” as a “sham.”

“The power in Iran is not held by elected officials who are accountable to the Iranian people,” he said, but “lies in the hands” of Khamenei “and his shadow network of corrupt appointees.”

The new sanctions target nine Khamenei appointees, including his family and individuals in his own office, as well as the General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces and its judiciary.

Khamenei’s Family

Those sanctioned include Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, who represents his father in an official capacity and has “worked closely” with the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), Qassim Soleimani, a Treasury Department statement explained.

Mojtaba’s father-in-law, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, who is also a member of the Expediency Council, was sanctioned as well.

IRGC Commanders

So, too, was the head of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, Gen. Mohammed Bagheri, who helped establish the intelligence division of the IRGC, after it was founded in 1979, in the first year of the Iranian revolution.

Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan headed IRGC forces in Lebanon and Syria in 1983, when the US Marine barracks in Beirut were attacked on Oct. 23, killing 241 US service members.

For the Marines, it was the deadliest single assault since World War II. The Marines were part of an international force, meant to keep the peace in Lebanon, following Israel’s 1982 invasion, which drove the PLO out of the country, only to pave the way for the emergence of another threat.

In addition to the casualties the Marines suffered, 58 French paratroopers, part of the same international force, were killed in a second, near-simultaneous truck bombing.

The twin attacks were a joint Syrian-Iranian operation. A month later, The New York Times, citing Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, reported that “it was Iranians who exploded the truck bomb in the Marine compound,” with the “‘sponsorship and knowledge and authority of the Syrian Government.’”

Dehghan is now Khamenei’s “military aide for the Defense Industries and Armed Forces Logistics,” the Treasury Department explained, and Dehghan was among those sanctioned on Monday.

A third IRGC commander – Gholam Ali Rashid – was also designated. Rashid heads the Khatam al-Anbia Central Headquarters, “the most important military headquarters in Iran,” which coordinates the operations of Iran’s armed forces, the Treasury Department stated.

Other Senior Iranian Officials

Four other key figures were also sanctioned, including Mohammadi Golpayegani, Khamenei’s Chief of Staff, and Vahid Haghanian, a former military commander, whom the Treasury Department described as Khamenei’s “right-hand man.”

Ali Akbar Velayati was Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1981 to 1997 and is now a senior adviser to Khamenei. He “has helped the Iranian regime extend financial lifelines to the Assad regime,” a senior administration official told journalists.

“But most importantly,” he continued, Velayati “has been charged in Argentina for homicide” in conjunction with the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

Finally, Ebrahim Raisi, appointed head of Iran’s judiciary in March, was also sanctioned. He was involved in the “brutal crackdown” on Iran’s Green Movement that followed the disputed 2009 election. Earlier, as deputy prosecutor general of Tehran, Raisi participated in a “death commission” that “ordered the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988,” the Treasury Department explained.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany