TEHRAN- The Treasury Department and the State Department said on Tuesday that the United States government has imposed charges and penalties on four Iranian nationals in connection with an alleged multi-year cyber operation that targeted over a dozen American firms.

Additionally, the Treasury Department issued sanctions on two firms, Dadeh Afzar Arman and Mehrsam Andisheh Saz Nik, which it claimed employed the individual defendants and served as front organizations for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard cyber command.

The business targets, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, were mostly defense contractors with access to confidential data; other targets included an accountancy firm and a hotel company located in New York. 

“These actors targeted more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear phishing and malware attacks,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The defendants, according to the prosecution, used spearfishing—a tactic that entails deceiving email recipients into clicking on harmful links—and impersonating women to win over people’s trust in order to infect computers with malware. 

Prosecutors alleged that over 200,000 employee accounts at the accountancy business and over 2,000 employee accounts at the hotel company were hacked. The purported misconduct transpired from 2016 to 2021. 

Prosecutors added that the four defendants—Hossein Harooni, Reza Kazemifar, Alireza Nasab, and Komeil Salmani—are all at mid-to late-30s. 

In reaction to Tehran’s retaliatory operation against the Israeli regime earlier this month, the United States and the United Kingdom declared last week that broad penalties would be placed on Iran’s military drone program.

The Israeli airstrike, which took place in Damascus’s Mezzeh district, resulted in the deaths of seven military advisors from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). Iranian officials have vowed a decisive response to what they described as a violation of international obligations and conventions.

The assault drew sharp rebukes from governments and foreign ministries, citing violations of international law and diplomatic norms.

Zahra Ershadi, Iran’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, told the 15-member Security Council that Iran reserves the right "to take a decisive response" to the attack, saying Israel violated the founding UN Charter, international law, and the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.

Israel’s crime clearly breached the basic principles of diplomatic and consular immunity, as well as the 1961 Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and the 1973 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes, the diplomat stated.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the strike, adding that the Israeli regime is responsible for the attack, which led to the martyrdom of seven Iranian military advisors in Syria.

“The Secretary-General reaffirms that the principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected in all cases in accordance with international law,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, AFP reported.

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei issued a statement, saying Israel will “regret” its criminal act.

While the majority of member states united in condemning the Israeli aggression, the staunch Western supporters of the regime chose not to denounce the act. This decision led to renewed accusations of hypocrisy and a lack of moral integrity against them.