The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is sanctioning a Turkish textile manufacturer for allegedly procuring weapons components on behalf of the Iranian regime.
Emti Fiber Textile Import Export Trade Limited Co. reportedly completed hundreds of shipments of cotton linters to Pardisan Rezvan Shargh, an Iranian company that OFAC sanctioned in December for allegedly procuring sodium perchlorate for Parchin Chemical Industries, an entity within Iran’s Defense Industries Organization.
Cotton linters—the short fibers left on cottonseed after ginning—can be processed into nitrocellulose, a highly volatile, nitrogen-rich material known as guncotton that’s used as a primary ingredient in solid rocket propellants for ballistic missiles.
Neither Emti Fiber Textile Import Export Trade Limited Co. nor Pardisan Rezvan Shargh could be reached for comment.
“The Iranian regime must be held accountable for its extortion of global energy markets and indiscriminate targeting of civilians with missiles and drones,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, as part of Economic Fury, Treasury will continue to follow the money and target the Iranian regime’s recklessness and those who enable it.”
Cotton pulp from West and Central Asia has emerged as modern warmongering’s most unlikely weapon.
Since Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, Russian gunpowder, ammunition and artillery factories have ramped up cotton cellulose imports from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, per leaked trade data from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
In 2023’s first nine months, Uzbek firms shipped $8.7 million worth of cotton pulp to Russia—over 70 percent more than all of 2022. Kazakhstan, whose cotton pulp exports go almost entirely to Russia, dispatched nearly 60 percent more of the material than the previous year, per the United Nations Comtrade database.
The United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Ukraine have sanctioned Uzbek companies, including Fargona Kimyo Zavodi MCHJ and Raw Materials Cellulose MCHJ, for supplying cotton cellulose used in Russian weapons production.
Trade data reviewed by risk analytics platform Kharon showed the two plants supplied over $170 million worth of cellulose to Russian military suppliers like state-owned Kazan Federal State Gunpowder Plant, Perm Powder Plant and Tambov Powder Plant—all of which were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023 for backing Russia’s war machine.
Emti Fiber Textile Import Export Trade Limited Co. was designated under Executive Order 13382, which President George W. Bush signed in 2005 to target weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferators and their networks by authorizing OFAC to add entities to the Specially Designated Nationals List. SDN designation triggers a total economic blockade, freezing any U.S.-jurisdiction assets and preventing dealings with U.S. persons.
OFAC warned that U.S. sanctions violations can trigger civil or criminal penalties—even on strict liability—and that non-U.S. persons risk sanctions for facilitating prohibited transactions or skirting them.
