Israel’s Defense Minister blacklisted 37 cryptocurrency wallets tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, alleging they moved roughly NIS 24 million to Hezbollah and other proxies. The move follows a US campaign that has frozen close to half a billion dollars in Iran-linked crypto.
Defense Minister Israel Katz sanctioned 37 cryptocurrency wallets tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, his office said on Wednesday. The wallets held funds totaling approximately NIS 24 million.
Those funds paid for various Iranian terror proxies, including Hezbollah, according to his office. A further investigation found that tens of millions of dollars moved to terror organizations through the wallets over the past several years.
According to The Jerusalem Post: “The campaign against Iran is not only being waged on the battlefield”, Katz said in the statement, adding that every dollar kept from the IRGC is a dollar that will not reach Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Iran’s other proxies.
A crypto crackdown that echoes Washington
The Israeli step lands weeks after the United States launched Operation Economic Fury, aimed at disrupting Iran’s shadow banking networks. That operation has frozen nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency linked to Iran’s regime.
Iranian shadow banking networks let the regime evade sanctions despite the US “maximum pressure” campaign, the US State Department says. Most US Treasury sanctions target individuals, companies, and other entities placed on its Specially Designated Nationals List, which cuts designees off from the dollar-based financial system and freezes their assets.
Anyone who transacts with a designated entity risks being sanctioned as well. Treasury is now reviewing older designations to focus institutions on the most sophisticated terror-financing and sanctions-evasion schemes, Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters in May.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
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