OFAC sanctioned crypto-linked Iranian oil financing network

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added a cryptocurrency-linked Iranian financing network to its sanctions list on September 16, 2025. OFAC’s record named four individuals and twelve companies in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, while its supporting notice identified seven Ethereum and Tron digital-currency addresses associated with two of the individuals.

Treasury alleged that Iranian nationals Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand coordinated purchases of more than $100 million in cryptocurrency between 2023 and 2025 using proceeds from Iranian oil sales. According to the department, foreign front companies then helped move the funds for the benefit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

The designation was a government enforcement action, not a criminal conviction or an independently audited accounting of the transfers. The amount, purpose and relationships described above were Treasury findings released with the action. OFAC’s list independently confirms who and what was designated, along with the digital addresses it attributed to Derakhshan and Alivand.

The network Treasury described

Treasury said Alivand had acted as a financial facilitator and oil broker for Syria-based Al-Qatirji Company, which the United States had designated in November 2024 over alleged support for the IRGC-Qods Force. The September 16 notice also connected Derakhshan to a group of UAE- and Hong Kong-based companies that, Treasury said, handled accounts, arranged transactions and bought products on behalf of Iranian military organizations.

OFAC designated Derakhshan and Alivand under Executive Order 13224, as amended, for alleged support to the IRGC-Qods Force. Two additional people, Vahid Derakhshan and Leila Karimi, and the twelve listed companies were designated through ownership, control or assistance relationships described by Treasury.

The action blocked property and interests in property of the designated persons that were in the United States or controlled by U.S. persons, and required those holdings to be reported to OFAC. Treasury also reiterated its 50-percent rule: an entity owned at least 50 percent, directly or indirectly and in aggregate, by blocked persons is itself blocked even if it is not separately named. Unless licensed or exempt, transactions by U.S. persons or within the United States involving blocked property were generally prohibited.

Why the crypto addresses mattered

The publication of specific Ethereum and Tron addresses turned a conventional sanctions notice into a direct compliance event for digital-asset businesses. Exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers and blockchain-screening providers could incorporate the identifiers into transaction monitoring. That is an interpretation of the operational impact; the September 16 records did not say which firms had frozen funds or rejected transactions.

Public blockchains can expose movements tied to a listed address, but an address alone does not establish the identity or purpose of every counterparty. Treasury did not publish a transaction-by-transaction calculation supporting the more-than-$100-million figure, identify every token involved or state how much value remained at the listed addresses on September 16. Coinburn therefore does not treat the announced amount as a same-day wallet balance or an independently verified on-chain total.

What was established on September 16

The verifiable event was the sanctions designation and SDN-list update. The government’s broader narrative—oil proceeds converted into cryptocurrency and routed through front companies—was an attributable allegation supporting that action. The distinction matters because sanctions apply immediately as an administrative compliance obligation, while the underlying conduct may remain disputed or tested through separate legal processes.

For the cryptocurrency sector, the action demonstrated how blockchain identifiers could be attached to a cross-border network spanning oil trade, front companies and military-linked beneficiaries. It also showed the limit of address-based transparency: the public record identified actionable endpoints, but did not provide a complete ledger of the network or a market-impact dataset. No defensible cryptocurrency price reaction can be isolated from the records reviewed for September 16, so this reconstruction makes no price or percentage claim.