Trump’s team has locked down $344 million in digital coins that US officials say had ties to Iran, pulling a huge pile of stablecoin money into Washington’s latest sanctions fight.
The freeze hit two Tether wallets. It came while talks over the war stayed messy, the ceasefire remained fragile, and the global economy kept paying for the fallout.
According to CNN, and US officials said the money trail led through Iranian crypto platforms, private wallet layers, and addresses tied to the Central Bank of Iran.
The White House is trying to hurt Tehran’s cash channels while negotiators still fail to land a deal. Nobody in Washington has said the freeze will force Iran to change its war plans or soften its negotiating stance.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department was sanctioning several wallets tied to Iran, and he said officials would keep chasing Tehran’s overseas cash lines. The Iranian mission at the United Nations gave no comment.
Treasury traces Iran-linked stablecoins through exchanges and central bank wallets
Tether said on Thursday that it helped the US government freeze $344 million held across two crypto addresses after several American agencies sent information about conduct they viewed as illegal.
That matters for crypto markets because USDT is not just another token sitting in some dusty corner. It is one of the main rails traders use to send dollar value around the world, and the issuer can freeze tokens when authorities bring a case.
A US official told CNN that investigators had information tying the coins to Iran. The official said blockchain analytics teams found links to the Iranian government, including transactions with Iranian exchanges and payments that passed through extra addresses before touching wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran.
CNN said it had not confirmed on its own that the two Tether wallets belonged to Iran or carried state-linked funds.
The same US official said the Central Bank of Iran has relied on harder-to-read crypto paths for cross-border payments. The official said Tehran has used digital assets while trying to support the rial and keep trade going under tight restrictions.
The Treasury also said it keeps regular contact with US and foreign banks, along with digital asset exchanges, as part of its sanctions work.
Chainalysis says Iran’s crypto pile reached $7.8 billion in 2025
Governments under heavy sanctions have leaned on crypto because banks are harder to use when Washington and its allies watch every wire.
Iran, Russia, and North Korea have all used digital assets to bring in money, pay partners, and work around blocked payment routes. Crypto is not secret fairy dust, and blockchain records can still be traced. But it gives sanctioned states more doors than the normal banking system.
Chainalysis, the crypto-tracing company, said Iran’s crypto holdings reached $7.8 billion in 2025. The company said that growth ran faster for most of the year than it did in 2024. It also alleges that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps held about half of Iran’s blockchain assets in the final quarter of 2025, matching the group’s large role across the country’s wider economy.
For the frozen Tether wallets, Chainalysis said those addresses were active years ago and often sent large sums, sometimes reaching tens of millions of dollars, mostly to private wallets. The company said that style looked like patterns seen in known IRGC crypto wallets.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday backed the idea of the US joining currency swap deals with allies in the Persian Gulf and Asia as those countries look for financial cover from the Iran war.
Scott said talks on US dollar swap lines are not new. In a post on X, he said they are part of regular talks the Treasury Department has had with partner countries for years.
Scott also said the possible swap deals show the US dollar’s central role in global finance and what he called the strength of America’s economic shield.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/trump-hits-iran-linked-crypto-with-a-344-million-freeze-in-new-sanctions-push/
