Sept. 17 (UPI) — The United States on Thursday sanctioned an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange controlled by U.S.-designated Iranian billionaire and business magnate Babak Zanjani, accusing BitBank of being used to transfer payments collected from vessels for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Trump administration has been targeting the 52-year-old Iranian financier and his assets since he was sanctioned in late January on accusations of financially backing projects supporting Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the Iranian regime. The Treasury said his digital exchanges have processed large volumes of funds for IRGC-linked entities.
BitBank was blacklisted Thursday by the Treasury, which said the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority has been used BitBank to transfer payments it has received for vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz since June when it came under U.S. sanctions.
Along with BitBank, its developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, and three Zanjani associates — Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, 69, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, 45, and Seyed Adel Heidari, 51 — were also sanctioned.
The sanctions block all property and interests in property of those designated while generally prohibiting U.S. persons from doing business with them.
“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond [the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s] reach,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The sanctions come as part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast, which the Treasury announced on Aug. 24 with the goal of severing Iran from foreign sources of funds in an effort to squeeze Iran.
Going back to his first administration, Trump has long tried to have Iran return to the negotiating table to make a deal aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon after he unilaterally pulled the United States from such a deal in 2018.
After the war began on Feb. 28, Iran has choked maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy shipping route, affecting global energy supplies.
In recent months, Trump has applied sanctions and directed the U.S. military to attack Iran to regain freedom of navigation through the strait. Despite repeated claims from Trump that the route is open, only a handful of vessels compared with pre-war levels are making it through each day.
“The United States remains committed to denying the Iranian regime and the IRGC access to the resources they use to threaten regional stability, support terrorism and undermine international security,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said in a statement.