Buenos Aires, January 10, 2026 – Total News Agency-TNA-A recent detailed analysis by the blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs revealed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran allegedly used two cryptocurrency exchanges registered in the United Kingdom to transfer nearly a million dollars between 2023 and 2025, with the apparent aim of evading economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western countries, according to a report that came to light in recent days. TRM Labs' research, which tracks transactions on the blockchain and financial activities linked to sanctioned actors, identified the platforms Zedcex and Zedxion as the primary vehicles used by the IRGC to move funds across international borders without resorting to the traditional banking system, which is under strict restrictions due to current sanctions. According to the report, transactions made by addresses linked to the Revolutionary Guard accounted for approximately 56% of the total volume of operations on these two platforms between 2023 and 2025, an indicator of the magnitude of the use of these exchanges by the Iranian military group. Economists and international finance experts have stated for several years that the country has increased its use of digital assets to circumvent economic restrictions, in an attempt to maintain a certain degree of global financial operability amid the blockage of traditional banking systems. The TRM Labs report adds to the growing concern of international intelligence agencies and financial regulators about the use of cryptocurrencies in networks and operations that seek to hide the origin and destination of large sums of money linked to sanctioned actors, including states and organizations classified as terrorist or destabilizing. The case poses new challenges for global supervisory policies, which will need to articulate more sophisticated mechanisms to track the flow of digital assets and ensure they do not become tools that undermine the sanction regimes designed to pressure governments and armed groups that pose risks to international security. Sources consulted: The Washington Post; TRM Labs report; analysis of cryptocurrency news on sanctions evasion; Wikipedia on cryptocurrency in Iran. Most of the movements were made using the stablecoin USDT on the Tron network, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the US dollar and is commonly used for cross-border transfers. The analysis indicates that this practice represents a qualitative leap in the use of digital assets by the IRGC, which for years has sought mechanisms to evade sanctions and finance activities ranging from overseas purchases to alleged support for allied groups, such as the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon, all included in the lists of organizations under US sanction. Among the identified transactions, TRM Labs traced a specific payment of $10 million sent from an account linked to the IRGC to another linked to a Yemeni citizen sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in 2021 for his participation in the smuggling of Iranian fuel to finance the Houthis. The report emphasizes that, unlike isolated or small-scale transactions that had been documented in the past, the use of these platforms indicates that the IRGC has developed a persistent crypto infrastructure, which complicates the efforts of regulatory and control agencies to monitor and sanction these capital flows. In turn, both exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, are registered in the United Kingdom, although they would not have included Iran in their internal lists of restricted countries, despite the fact that the country is subject to extensive international sanctions that limit its ability to access global financial markets. Meanwhile, neither the representatives of the platforms nor British authorities have offered public comments on the allegations, according to the analysis. The use of cryptocurrencies as a tool to evade sanctions is not, in itself, unprecedented in the Iranian case.
