Canada has reimposed sanctions on 11 Iranian entities that it removed from its sanctions list in 2016, Global Affairs Canada said in a backgrounder published Nov. 10, 2026. The department did not say on what date the sanctions take effect.

The listed entities include the National Iranian Oil Company, the National Iranian Tanker Company, Bank Mellat, Bank Melli Iran, the Bank of Industry and Mine, the Export Development Bank of Iran, and Iran Insurance Company. The other four are the Nuclear Fuel Production and Procurement Company, the Nuclear Reactors Fuel Company, Kala Naft and Naftiran Intertrade Company.

Under the Special Economic Measures (Iran) Regulations, persons in Canada and Canadians abroad may not carry out specified financial or property transactions with listed individuals and entities. Global Affairs Canada said the move tightens limits on Iran’s ability to obtain sensitive technologies and money. The document did not describe the penalties for breaking the rules.

The department said Canada first imposed these sanctions in July 2010, in consultation with partners including the United States and the European Union. It said the sanctions followed Iran’s failure to meet its international obligations on its nuclear program.

In July 2015, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, together with the European Union, reached an agreement with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The department said the deal limited Iran’s nuclear program and increased inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, in exchange for sanctions relief. The agency reported in January 2016 that Iran had let verification work go forward and had curbed its nuclear program. Canada eased its sanctions the next month, including by delisting these 11 entities.

Global Affairs Canada described a series of events since then. In June 2025, the agency’s Board of Governors passed a resolution concluding that Iran was failing to meet its duties under the agency’s safeguards, which are its monitoring arrangements. In July, after Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, Iran halted its cooperation with the agency, which further blocked key verification and monitoring work, the department said.

In August 2025, France, Germany and the United Kingdom invoked the “snapback” mechanism, which allows UN nuclear-related sanctions lifted under the 2015 agreement to be reinstated. The department said they pointed to Iran’s breaches of its nuclear commitments, among them making uranium enriched to a high level and not cooperating enough with the agency. The UN sanctions were reinstated in September 2025, and Canada amended its regulations implementing the UN resolutions on Iran that month.

The department also noted that the Group of Seven leading economies reaffirmed in June 2026 that Iran must not develop or acquire a nuclear weapon. It said the G7 stressed the importance of limits on uranium enrichment and of effective agency verification.

The backgrounder says Iran, as a country without nuclear weapons that is party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, must not develop or acquire them.