Iran cannot move dollars through ordinary banks, so it moves them as crypto through small exchanges that ask few questions. On Friday the Treasury Department blacklisted one of the biggest of those exchanges, a Dubai storefront called Shelbit, along with the Iranian expatriate who built it and a chain of shell companies stretching across four countries.

The designation puts every one of those entities on the sanctions list, which means American banks, payment processors and crypto platforms are now barred from touching them and must freeze any assets they hold. Foreign firms that keep dealing with them face their own exposure.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the action targets two digital asset exchanges the Iranian regime relies on, along with the ringleader of a network of front companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. Iranian actors used unlicensed or lightly regulated platforms to move large volumes of digital assets, running the proceeds through corporate networks and an online gambling operation that hid where the money came from before it reached the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regime-connected individuals.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed it as evidence the pressure campaign is landing, saying the department will “hunt down and dismantle the illicit financial networks” keeping the regime solvent, whether the money moves in dollars, rials or crypto.

The numbers Treasury put on the record are specific. Wallets belonging to the Revolutionary Guard sent more than $1 million in digital assets to Shelbit Exchange addresses, and more than $2 million moved back the other way from Shelbit to Guard-controlled wallets. Addresses owned or controlled by the exchange’s founder, Siavash Kayvanpour, sent over $2 million to Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, which the US designated earlier. Kayvanpour was born in Iran, holds citizenship in Dominica and Afghanistan, has lived in the United Arab Emirates, and runs the exchange through a Republic of Georgia company while a UAE entity, Shelbit General Trading, operates it commercially. He also owns a Poland-based affiliate and manages two more Dubai companies, all of which were designated Friday.

The gambling piece is the part that turns a sanctions case into a story about how the money actually cleared. Shelbit served a large Persian-language gambling network run by two Iranian influencers living abroad, and tens of millions of dollars of that network’s digital assets were washed through the exchange. Both men were convicted of illegal gambling inside Iran in 2023, yet their websites retain access to Iran’s online payment systems, which the central bank controls tightly.

Dubai’s regulator had already been circling. The UAE’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority took enforcement action against the trading company in January 2025 and again in July 2026, and it remained open for business.

Treasury hit a second target the same day. Aban Tether, an Iran-based exchange, was designated for operating in the Iranian financial sector after processing millions of dollars in transactions with previously blacklisted platforms including Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex.

The action followed a press investigation rather than preceding it. Reuters published a report on July 31 identifying Shelbit as the hub of a $4 billion Iranian sanctions-evasion operation, finding that the exchange moved crypto for Iran’s central bank, for one of the world’s largest illegal online gambling networks, and to addresses Israeli authorities have tied to the Revolutionary Guard. The exchange’s public website had been dark for months while money kept flowing through it, including during the war, and it came back online the day after that report ran.

Shelbit disputes the case. In an August 1 statement posted on its revived site, the company said it “categorically rejects any suggestion” that it knowingly took part in money laundering, terrorist financing, illegal gambling, sanctions evasion, or work for any sanctioned, military or government body, and said it had shut down operations in January 2026. Neither the company nor Kayvanpour responded to requests for comment.

For compliance officers at US banks and crypto firms, the practical takeaway is the reach of the order. Any entity owned 50 percent or more by the blocked parties is automatically blocked as well, penalties can be imposed on a strict-liability basis, and non-US persons are barred from causing Americans to violate the rules even unwittingly. The case was built with the IRS criminal investigation division, and the State Department is offering up to $15 million for information that disrupts Revolutionary Guard financing.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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