The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated BitBank, an Iranian digital assets exchange controlled by financier Babak Zanjani, as part of Operation Economic Outcast on September 17, according to a Treasury press release. The action also covers the exchange’s software developer and three Zanjani associates, and it directly targets the infrastructure the department says was used to move hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
A Bitcoin Pipeline to the IRGC
OFAC said the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, an entity already under sanctions, has used BitBank since June to transfer payments it received to the Iranian regime. Between June and July of this year, Zanjani used the exchange to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin to the IRGC. BitBank’s digital assets software was developed by Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, a subsidiary of the already-designated Dot One Value Creation Group, according to the Treasury. Zanjani was sentenced to death in Iran in 2016 for embezzlement before his sentence was commuted in 2024, and by 2025 he had re-emerged as a backer of regime-linked projects.
Executives Named in the Designation
Alongside BitBank and Pishtaz Simorgh, OFAC designated three executives it described as key lieutenants in Zanjani’s digital assets network: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein and Seyed Adel Heidari. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the move makes clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime with cryptocurrency are not beyond the regulator’s reach. “If you support the Iranian regime, the Department of the Treasury will sanction you,” he said. The designations were taken under Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran’s digital asset sector.
Broadening the Economic Outcast Campaign
The designation expands Operation Economic Outcast, the administration-wide campaign Treasury launched on August 24 and has branded “Economic D-Day” to cut off the regime’s remaining revenue streams. It follows earlier steps against Iranian crypto infrastructure, including a sweep that named a crypto processor in Iran’s sanctions-evasion network and sanctions on a Bitcoin-linked platform tied to the IRGC for ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury said it will keep targeting the Iranian digital asset ecosystem as well as the international actors that help facilitate it.
