US Freezes $344 Million in Tether's USDT, Citing Iranian Regime Ties

In its latest move to disrupt Iranian financial networks, the US Treasury Department has frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency. The action is part of a broader initiative, dubbed 'Economic Fury', aimed at targeting the regime's financial lifelines. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the department will track and disrupt any financial transactions that Tehran attempts to make outside of the country. The freeze is a result of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioning multiple crypto wallets linked to Iran. This move follows Tether's decision to blacklist two blockchain addresses on Tron, holding a combined total of $344 million in USDT. According to a US official, the sanctioned wallets have been found to have significant ties to the Iranian regime, including transactions with Iranian exchanges and connections to wallets associated with the Central Bank of Iran. The Iranian government has been attempting to utilize digital assets to conceal its cross-border transactions. Authorities have noted that Iran has increasingly turned to cryptocurrency to evade restrictions, using complex transaction patterns to obscure its involvement in cross-border payments and support trade flows under sanctions pressure. The Treasury Department's OFAC is taking aggressive action against both traditional front companies and the use of digital assets. In a related move, the US also sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery Co., a China-based independent refinery, for its role in Iran's oil economy. The US agency continues to collaborate with blockchain analytics firms and financial institutions, including crypto exchanges, to track and disrupt illicit flows tied to sanctioned entities.