The United States is further extending its sanctions against Iran to the area of digital assets. TRM Labs, a block chain analysis company, states that 30 encrypted addresses related to Iranian Mabna Institute members have cumulatively received approximately US$ 16.8 million since 2018, involving bitcoin, Ether and Tron networks.
Cumulative inflow of $16.8 million from 30 addresses
This address appeared in a sanctions operation announced by the United States Treasury Department on August 24th. TRM Labs states that at the time of completion of its analysis, only about US$ 20.27 million remained in these wallets, or approximately 1 per cent of the total flow.
According to TRM, financial flows are highly concentrated at the address of Keyvan Fayaz. The 10 addresses associated with them received approximately $15.5 million between 6 January 2018 and 20 August 2026, representing 92 per cent of the traffic across the network chain.
Behzad Mesri's wallet shows another path. TRM states that some of the funds were transferred through multiple layers of addresses and that hundreds of thousands of dollars subsequently went to the full-value address of a large centralized exchange.
United States inclusion of digital assets in sanctionable sectors
Prior to the wallet sanctions, on 18 August the United States Department of Justice made public a substitute indictment in which 17 Mabna Institute members were charged with 14 charges. According to the prosecution, the organization had carried out cyber-invasions on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran and other Iranian institutions.
The prosecution documents state that the actions targeted 144 American universities, 178 overseas universities, dozens of companies and multiple government agencies, and stole academic data and intellectual property over 31TB.
The change in this measure by the United States Department of the Treasury is that digital assets are explicitly listed as one of the sanctionsable sectors of the Iranian economy, alongside technology, gold, aviation and shipping. This does not mean that all enterprises in this field would be automatically blocked, but it would give the United States Office of Overseas Assets Control greater authority to sanction Iranian and non-Iranian entities involved in related activities.
There have been several recent attacks on Iranian encryption.
This is not the first time that the United States has recently taken action against Iran's related encryption network. In July, law enforcement frozen four Tron wallets related to the Central Bank of Iran for over $130 million. Previously, the United States Treasury Department also sanctioned the largest Iranian encryption exchange, Nobitex.
According to RM, this type of case illustrates the increasing role of analysis in the implementation of sanctions. Digital assets can move quickly across borders, but transaction records are often publicly tracked, which also makes chain-based financial flows an important tool for law enforcement to identify networks and trace.