In recent years, the Iranian economy has been subject to an intense programme of international sanctions aimed at changing the domestic government’s policies on the development of nuclear technology. A key characteristic of these sanctions has been targeting: international policy has attempted to concentrate the impact of sanctions on economic activities that are related to the direct development of nuclear technology and the economic interests of key actors in Iran’s political establishment. In this paper we measure the incidence of sanctions using an event study methodology focused on the November 24^th 2013 diplomatic breakthrough negotiated in Geneva (known as the “P5+1 Talks”). This event represents a sudden, discrete relaxation of sanctions policies that allows us to identify implied impacts across firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Our ‘targeted’ group of firms – assembled from detailed policy documents on sanctions – include the business interests of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); Setad (a conglomerate under the direct control of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei); and a list of other firms directly identified as involved in the development of nuclear technology. We find that cumulative returns around the 3-day window of the Geneva agreement are twice as high for targeted firms relative to all other firms reporting in this period. This holds even controlling for industry-specific treatments and a full range of placebo exercises.