More than $2 million moved out of Shelbit Exchange addresses and into wallets the U.S. Treasury says belong to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Just over $1 million went the other way. Those two numbers, published Friday in a Treasury press release, are the sort of detail that separates a crypto sanctions action from a diplomatic press statement.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Shelbit Exchange and Iran-based Aban Tether, saying both helped Iran move money outside the traditional banking system.
The action also named Siavash Kayvanpour and several companies tied to him in Georgia, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. Wallets belonging to or controlled by Kayvanpour sent over $2 million to Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, according to the Treasury.
The name on the second exchange isn’t what it looks like
Aban Tether shares a word with the largest stablecoin issuer in crypto. It doesn’t appear to be connected to it. We’ve reached out to Tether to confirm the exchange is unrelated to the firm.
Aban Tether has processed millions of dollars in transactions involving sanctioned Iranian exchanges, including Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex, the press release said.
The crypto piece is the smaller half of Friday’s action
OFAC also sanctioned a network of foreign exchange houses, shell companies and individuals it said helped Iran’s shadow banking system move hundreds of millions of dollars, including funds tied to overseas oil sales.
Set that against the low seven figures attributed to Shelbit and the proportions are clear. Crypto is a channel here. Oil money and correspondent-style exchange houses are still the pipe.
“The Iranian regime’s reliance on digital assets and shadow banking networks is further evidence that Economic Fury is working,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Whether in dollars, rials, or crypto, Treasury will hunt down and dismantle the illicit financial networks that keep the regime afloat.”
Why blockchains cut both ways for a sanctioned state
The designations landed as the U.S.-Iran war raised the stakes of Washington’s push to cut Tehran off from foreign currency and global financial markets.
Cryptocurrencies may offer sanctioned entities another route to move funds when banks cut them off. But blockchain transactions can also leave a public trail that investigators and analytics firms can follow.
That trail is presumably how Treasury arrived at figures precise enough to publish. You don’t get “more than $1 million in” and “more than $2 million out” from a wire transfer request.
This is the fourth move in a pattern, not a one-off
In January, the Treasury sanctioned Zedcex and Zedxion, the first crypto exchanges targeted under its Iran-specific financial sanctions.
In June, it blacklisted Nobitex and several other Iranian crypto exchanges as part of the campaign against Tehran. Nobitex now shows up on both sides of the ledger: sanctioned itself, and named again Friday as the destination for Kayvanpour’s $2 million.
Last month brought four crypto wallets linked to Iran’s central bank. Tether, issuer of the largest stablecoin USDT, then froze about $131 million held in those wallets. The U.S. also sanctioned two Iranian maritime insurance entities over an alleged scheme that funneled funds to the IRGC.
The $131 million is the number worth watching
That freeze is the single largest figure in the whole sequence, and Treasury didn’t execute it. A private company did, at a keyboard, after the designation landed.
Which is where the expanding campaign actually bites. It puts pressure on exchanges and stablecoin issuers to identify Iranian-linked funds and block sanctioned entities from moving them.
So if you’re trying to read where this goes next, don’t watch OFAC’s press releases. Watch whether Shelbit and Aban Tether counterparties see balances frozen the way those central-bank wallets did, and how fast. The designation is the easy part. Enforcement runs through companies that have to choose to act.
