Tightening sanctions against Iran’s crypto sector has taken a new turn with a major freeze on USDT stablecoins.
In a statement from the analytics company Chainalysis on April 27, сообщается, that the seizure of $344 million in USDT was carried out after analyzing a large number of transactions involving brokers, intermediary wallets, and blockchain routing. As a result, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) contributed two crypto wallets linked to the Central Bank of Iran were added to its sanctions list.
Iran’s digital asset networks provide critical financial infrastructure needed to launder billions of dollars of illicit wealth for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran-linked terrorist organizations across the region, according to Chainalysis.
Chainalysis specialists have revealed transactions involving stablecoins linked to Iran. They were assisted in this by Iranian citizen Babak Morteza Zanjani, who published documents containing crypto wallets that he claimed were linked to the Central Bank of Iran.
Based on this, Chainalysis concluded that these materials indicate the broker helped the regime purchase stablecoins with fiat currency. He, in turn, had ties to Alireza Derakhshan, who coordinated the purchase of over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency, obtained from the sale of Iranian oil between 2023 and 2025.
The analytics company described the flow of transactions in which funds moved from brokers to stablecoins through intermediary wallets, bridges, and protocols. DeFi, after which they were recruited by Iranian organizations, which, in turn, are allegedly controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The Central Bank of Iran’s funds were laundered through several bridges and DeFi-protocols before returning to the main Iranian crypto ecosystem, Chainalysis concluded.
Do you think Iranian organizations would evade sanctions by transacting in issuer-managed dollar stablecoins?
By the way, the company Tether, which issued the USDT stablecoins that were recently frozen, is carrying out blocking without a court order, which waiting for at a competing company, Circle, which launched a similar dollar stablecoin USDC.
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