Canada on Tuesday put 11 Iranian energy and financial entities back under sanctions, undoing the delisting Ottawa granted in 2016 under the nuclear deal, after the International Atomic Energy Agency found in June 2025 that Iran was no longer complying with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand announced the move and left no room for doubt about where Canada stands: "Canada's position is unequivocal: Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon."
The list reaches into the heart of Iran's oil trade and banking system: the National Iranian Oil Company and the National Iranian Tanker Company, the state firms that produce and ship Iran's crude; the Nuclear Fuel Production and Procurement Company and the Nuclear Reactors Fuel Company; Kala Naft and the Naftiran Intertrade Company; and four of Iran's biggest banks — Bank Mellat, Bank Melli Iran, the Bank of Industry and Mine and the Export Development Bank of Iran — along with the Iran Insurance Company. Canadians in Canada and abroad are barred from any financial or property dealings with them.
Global Affairs Canada said the 11 were also sanctioned for their roles in Iran's ballistic missile program and in financing its malign activities, and that the move aligns Canada with its partners to disrupt the Iranian financial networks that support the nuclear program. "We will continue to work with our G7 partners and the broader international community toward a comprehensive, verifiable and durable agreement that addresses Iran's nuclear program and strengthens regional and international security," Anand said. The announcement came on the day G7 foreign ministers, Anand among them, were meeting in Paris with the Iran crisis on the agenda. It was the 25th round of Canadian sanctions on Iran, bringing the running total to 237 Iranian citizens and 276 organizations.
The step lands as Western pressure on Tehran tightens on several fronts at once. After the joint U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran in February, Iran suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, leaving inspectors blind to a nuclear program the agency had already found in breach. At the same G7 table in Paris on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was telling the allies that Washington will keep imposing devastating economic costs on the regime — and Canada's move puts Ottawa's own sanctions weight behind that squeeze.
For households far from the negotiating rooms, the point of squeezing Iran's oil and banking networks is straightforward: every dollar the regime cannot raise is a dollar it cannot spend on missiles, proxies and a nuclear program that would make the Middle East — and the world's energy routes through it — far more dangerous, and a nuclear-armed Iran is the outcome every family that fills a tank or heats a home would end up paying for.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit: https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram