Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is taking sanctions evasion to a whole new level, and they’re doing it with cryptocurrency.
According to a new investigation by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs (as reported by The Washington Post), Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has slowly moved roughly $1 billion through two UK-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, since 2023.
IRGC-linked transactions constituted a massive 56% of the total volume on these platforms between 2023 and 2025. Almost all of it flowed through Tether’s USDT stablecoin on the super-fast Tron network.
The scale is mind-blowing.
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Is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard building its own shadow financial system?
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ramped up fast from $24 million in 2023, exploding to $619 million in 2024, and still pulling in $410 million through 2025.
This isn’t random wallet-hopping anymore. It’s looking more and more like Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is deliberately building its own shadow financial system to keep the money moving no matter what sanctions get thrown their way.
Miad Maleki, who used to work on Iran sanctions at the US Treasury, reportedly told The Washington Post that “the $1 billion figure over two years demonstrates that digital currencies are becoming a financial channel for Iran’s shadow banking apparatus.”
And this comes at a time when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard faces growing heat at home.
The ongoing protests against the regime and the IRGC show no signs of slowing, with many Iranians openly calling out the Guard’s role in repression, corruption, and funneling national resources into foreign conflicts instead of helping ordinary people.
The IRGC is already under crushing US and Western sanctions, largely because of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for groups the United States labels as terrorist organizations.
How did researchers uncover all this?
TRM Labs made small test deposits and withdrawals to map the exchanges’ hidden wallet networks.
They also tracked funds tied to 187 wallet addresses that Israeli authorities had flagged last year as controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
One standout transaction: a $10 million transfer from an IRGC-linked wallet to a Yemeni national the US Treasury sanctioned back in 2021 for smuggling Iranian fuel to bankroll the Houthis.
There’s even a connection to Babak Zanjani, the controversial Iranian businessman who helped the government dodge oil sanctions during the Ahmadinejad years, got convicted of embezzlement, faced a death sentence (later commuted), and was recently released from prison.
Both exchanges claim they follow anti-money-laundering rules. Zedcex even lists Iran as a prohibited country on its site; Zedxion conveniently doesn’t.
Neither exchange has responded to the criticism. Iran’s UN mission and the UK’s financial sanctions office stayed silent too.
