In a move to toughen the sanctions regime against Tehran, the European Union last week imposed punitive measures on 32 Iranian officials for human rights violations - but it's unclear how effective the move will be.

The targeted individuals are described as responsible for and instrumental in the policies of Iran, including extra-judicial executions and imprisonment of opposition leaders.

The EU move follows earlier United States actions which imposed restrictive measures on a handful of Iranian officials for being "responsible for or complicit in serious human rights abuses" since the 2009 disputed presidential election.

Some Iran watchers believe the latest EU measures could serve to deter the targeted Iranian officials from further oppressive actions. But others fear they may become more isolated and determined as a result of the move.

British foreign secretary William Hague at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg said the Iranian regime has worsened since recent uprisings in Northern African and the Middle East.

Also according to recently published 2010 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report, "Iran ended the year with human rights more restricted than at any time during the last decade."

In February 2010, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi urged the Human Rights Council to fully hold Iran to account, saying, "In Iran ... every year we're taking a step backwards rather than a step forwards."

According to the EU measures, European-held assets of the 32 Iranian military, paramilitary, police, judicial and prison officials as well as all resources controlled by their entities are to be blocked.

The stipulated sanctions also include travel restrictions for the individuals concerned.

Following the EU action, a group of United States senators urged the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to formally declare Iranian president Mahmood Ahmadinejad a human rights abuser.

The senators also noted that the EU had described the 32 Iranians it had targeted as rights abusers, and the US had only identified seven on the European list as such.

"Therefore, we urge you to immediately investigate for possible designation as human rights abusers the following 25 individuals listed by the European Union as Iranian human rights abusers," they said in a letter to Clinton.

So far none of the targeted officials have reacted against the EU move, but the Iranian foreign ministry has dismissed it as "politically motivated and a sign that the EU is following in the footsteps of the US".

The 32 targeted Iranians include several military and security officials, such as the Iran's chief of police, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam; Basij commander, Mohammad Reza Naghdi; and deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards Abdollah Eraghi.

Prominent judicial figures covered by the EU sanction are head of Mashad's judiciary, Hassan Shariati; the Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi; and Iran's prosecutor-general Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi.

Hague said that these legal officials are "believed to be directly involved in the oppression of human rights activists and government dissidents".

Commenting on the effectiveness of the EU sanction, the Toronto-based Iranian journalist Shahram Rafizadeh believes the list of targets "mostly works as a psychological war against the officials".

"By singling out those criminals, they will understand that their actions are not left unnoticed and once the regime collapses they will know that there is no place for them to hide, then they will be severely punished," said Rafizadeh who spent 73 days in solitary confinement in 2004 because of his contributions to reformist websites.

During his time in detention, Rafizadeh along with three other journalists claimed they were tortured and forced to make confessions by Saeed Mortazavi, then Tehran prosecutor, whose name is on the EU list.

According to a New York-based organisation the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Mortazavi was Tehran prosecutor at the time of the 2009 elections when he "issued a general arrest warrant four days before the elections, later used by security and intelligence agents to arrest hundreds of well-known journalists, students, and political activists deemed 'suspicious'".

Nicknamed the "butcher of the press" and "torturer of Tehran", Mortazavi is also alleged to have ordered the closure of hundreds of publications and sent dozens of journalists to prison, over the past decade.

Some analysts wonder what the impact of the EU move will be if the Iranian regime survives.

They're concerned that the EU may waive sanctions against some of the targeted individuals as was the case earlier this year when the travel ban against foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi was suspended to enable him to attend the Munich conference in Germany.

Salehi was included on a list of Iranian officials barred from entering the EU as part of sanctions imposed to curb Iran's nuclear programme.

At the same time, some Iranian commentators and intellectuals suggest with heavy irony that the political battle in Iran can be reduced to that between those who have travelled extensively throughout the world, the reformists, and those that rarely leave the country, the hardliners.

Some joke that some sort of international sanction that would actually force the hardliners to travel might improve the lives of ordinary Iranians.

"Just imagine if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmad Jannati or other fundamentalists in Tehran and Qom could be pulled away from their caves and forced to travel to Paris, London, Berlin and other western cities every year to see other people's lives, then our lives in Iran most probably would be better," an Iranian filmmaker friend told me recently.

Indeed, many of Iran's high-ranking officials have never been outside Iran or the Middle East.

Ayatollah Khamenei never left the country since he became Supreme Leader in June 1989. In his previous position as president, did so only a few times: once to attend the United Nations General Assembly in September 1987 and on other occasions to countries with poor democratic records such as Libya, Algeria, Syria, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, China and North Korea.

On the other hand, noted reformer former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, currently the chair of the Expediency Discernment Council, has traveled across the globe before and after the revolution 1979.

In 1974-75, he went to Belgium, Turkey, Britain, Japan and also US, and during his presidency (1989-1997) became familiar with many other parts of the world.

Last year in an interview with Modiriyat-e Ertebatat monthly, he said, "After the revolution, all government officials were against reviving the Tehran metro project, which was stopped following the revolution. They argued that Metro was a luxurious project which could make the country dependent on the West.

"But due to my travels to foreign countries like France, Britain and the US, I realised how important it is to have a metro system to alleviate traffic congestion. Therefore, I did start in Friday sermons to justify the advantages of metro rail . then when I became the president, metro started operations."