Max Mislisch, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Iran International that the Islamic Republic broadly uses cryptocurrencies—especially dollar-backed stablecoins—to sell sanctioned oil and buy dual-use equipment from China.

Mislisch, a former official at the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department, said the importance of these tools has increased with the intensification of sanctions enforcement in the Trump administration.

He said the U.S. Treasury Department, in cooperation with law-enforcement agencies, has blocked more than half a billion dollars in assets in the form of cryptocurrencies during the course of the war.

Mislisch added that the Islamic Republic will likely move toward areas with weaker financial oversight and, at the same time, seeks to conceal its role in transactions.

According to him, countering this trend requires greater cooperation among countries, regulatory bodies, and stablecoin issuers—especially Tether—in order to block resources related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the sanctioned sectors of Iran’s economy.