The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two additional cryptocurrency exchanges on Thursday as part of Operation Economic Fury, a sustained enforcement campaign targeting Iran's use of digital assets to circumvent international financial restrictions. Shelbit Exchange and Aban Tether were both added to the Specially Designated Nationals list, meaning their assets are blocked and US persons are prohibited from transacting with them.

The campaign was formally introduced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in April 2026, following US-Israeli military strikes on Tehran in February 2026 that dramatically intensified pressure on Iranian financial networks. Bessent framed Thursday's action as part of a deliberate escalation. "We will continue to increase the economic pressure," he said in the official press release. He has previously stated that the US has seized approximately $1 billion in Iranian crypto holdings across the campaign so far, adding that some account holders may not yet know their wallets have been frozen.

A Ghost Exchange with a Global Footprint

The Shelbit designation stands out because the exchange is not based in Iran. Its corporate structure spans three countries: SHPS Shelbit is registered in Georgia, Shelbit General Trading LLC operates out of the UAE, Shelbit Technologies Ltd is incorporated in Poland, and two affiliated entities, Crypto Home DMCC and NFT Home DMCC, are also UAE-registered.

The exchange is controlled by Siavash Kayvanpour, an Iranian-born national who holds citizenship from Dominica and Afghanistan and is based in the UAE.

Treasury traced more than $3 million in direct transfers between Shelbit and IRGC-linked wallets: over $1 million flowing in from IRGC addresses and more than $2 million flowing back out to them. Those figures represent only the directly documented flows. A Reuters blockchain investigation published in late July found that Shelbit processed at least $4 billion in transactions from May 2024 onward, connecting Iran's Central Bank (with over $125 million traced through the network), an Iranian bitcoin mining operation, and an offshore illegal gambling ring to global crypto markets.

The US State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering $15 million for information on Kayvanpour's financial network.

Dubai Knew, and Funds Still Moved

Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority had already issued a cease-and-desist order against Shelbit in January 2025 and again on July 24, 2026, exactly two weeks before the US designation.

Despite those orders, an estimated $540 million continued to flow from Shelbit-linked wallets to Binance, the world's largest exchange, after the first regulatory warning, according to Tokenist. Total Shelbit-linked flows to Binance reached at least $676 million, according to Reuters and CryptoBriefing's blockchain analysis.

Aban Tether, the second entity designated on Thursday, is Iran-based. It was sanctioned under Executive Order 13902, which covers Iran's financial sector, after Treasury found it had processed millions in transactions involving exchanges already on the sanctions list: Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex. Those four were designated together in June 2026. The scale of those designees explains why transacting with them has become a meaningful red flag for regulators. Nobitex alone accounted for more than 50 percent of Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025 and had approximately 11 million users, and the combined lifetime transaction volume of all four exchanges exceeded $40 billion.

Tether as an Enforcement Tool

The primary technical mechanism behind Operation Economic Fury has been the use of USDT, the world's largest stablecoin, as a direct enforcement instrument. Tether, the company that issues USDT, can freeze wallet balances without altering the underlying blockchain. Affected wallets remain publicly visible on-chain, but the tokens inside cannot be moved or redeemed.

Tether has frozen approximately $475 million in USDT on the Tron blockchain linked to Iranian entities since the campaign began, including a single $344 million freeze in April 2026 targeting Bank Markazi, Iran's central bank, and a further $131 million frozen across four Tron wallets in July 2026. These Tron-specific USDT freezes represent a portion of the roughly $1 billion in total crypto assets seized across Operation Economic Fury as a whole; that broader figure includes other asset types and enforcement mechanisms beyond Tether freezes. Tether reports working with over 340 law enforcement agencies across 65 countries; of the $4.4 billion it has frozen in its history, $2.1 billion has been at the request of US authorities.

Tron-based USDT has become the dominant stablecoin rail for Iranian exchanges for structural reasons that go beyond convenience. Decades of SWIFT exclusion and dollar correspondent banking cutoffs have left digital assets as the primary accessible alternative for cross-border settlement. Iran also leverages subsidized domestic electricity for crypto mining to convert state energy subsidies into tradable assets. Within that context, Tron's low transaction fees and fast settlement times make it the practical default for Iranian operators seeking global market access.

What This Means Outside the US

For exchanges operating in South Asia, the Gulf, and Africa, Thursday's action carries direct compliance implications. Tron-based USDT is a heavily used settlement rail for remittance corridors connecting South Asia to the Gulf: South Asia receives approximately 26 percent of global remittances, with India alone accounting for around 15 percent of the global total. The same blockchain infrastructure therefore sits under both legitimate remittance flows and the documented Iranian evasion network.

The compliance stakes vary by jurisdiction. In the UAE, virtual asset service providers that transacted with Shelbit now face secondary sanctions exposure given their direct contact with a newly designated entity. In Pakistan, where a virtual asset regulatory sandbox launched in February 2026, regulators have signaled that cluster-level blockchain analytics will be a requirement for licensed operators, a standard that Thursday's designation reinforces. In Africa, OTC desks and peer-to-peer platforms in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya operating on Tron rails should treat the newly published wallet clusters as immediate screening inputs, given those countries' active licensing frameworks for digital asset businesses.

Blockchain analytics firms have flagged a significant screening gap. Name-matching tools alone will not catch exposure to a network like Shelbit's, which operated across five legal entities in three countries.

OFAC's "50 percent rule" compounds the risk: any entity majority-owned by a designated person is automatically blocked, even if it has never appeared on a sanctions list by name.

The IRS Criminal Investigation division coordinated with Treasury on the August 7 action, a detail compliance teams should note. That involvement signals potential criminal referrals for violations, not just civil penalties.

Operation Economic Fury shows no signs of slowing. Since its formal launch in April 2026, Treasury has sanctioned a growing roster of Iranian financial entities, frozen close to $1 billion in crypto assets, and expanded its reach from Tehran to Dubai to Warsaw. Analysts recommend that exchanges and developers anywhere in the Tron ecosystem treat this week's designations as a prompt to run fresh blockchain analytics against the newly published wallet clusters before the next round lands.