The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated, on September 17, BitBank, a priority digital assets venture controlled by OFAC-designated Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, as part of Operation Economic Outcast, President Donald Trump Administration’s whole-of-government economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers. Treasury’s designations also include BitBank’s developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company and three associates of Zanjani: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, and Seyed Adel Heidari. The entities and individuals designated are key components of the Iranian regime’s digital assets-based sanctions evasion infrastructure.
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent noted that the “designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach.”
Announced by Secretary Bessent on August 24, and dubbed “Economic D-Day,” Operation Economic Outcast is severing the remaining economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime. Treasury has mapped the networks, facilitators, and financial channels that Iran uses to smuggle oil, evade sanctions, and fund terror. Working with partners across the U.S. government, the European Union, United Kingdom, Gulf partners, and others, Treasury is targeting any source of the regime’s illicit revenue.
Treasury warned that any entity facilitating money laundering or sanctions evasion on behalf of Iran risks being cut off from the U.S. financial system. Treasury also emphasized the secondary sanctions exposure for those who continue doing business with the Iranian regime and will accelerate the pace of U.S. enforcement.
On January 30, and July 24, of this year, OFAC designated multiple Zanjani-linked digital assets entities and facilitators. After being sentenced to death in Iran in 2016 for embezzling millions from the OFAC-designated National Iranian Oil Company, Zanjani’s sentence was commuted in 2024. By 2025, he had publicly re-emerged as a backer of regime-linked economic projects. Alongside high‑profile infrastructure and transportation ventures, Zanjani built a network of digital asset companies used in part to launder money for the IRGC. Through this combined infrastructure, Zanjani’s enterprises have served as both public‑facing commercial ventures and covert financial platforms enabling sanctions evasion and support to Iranian state‑linked entities.
BitBank is an Iranian digital assets exchange. Since at least 2024, Zanjani has advertised BitBank’s services on his social media accounts, and it has been listed as a partner by multiple other companies within Zanjani’s sanctions evasion network. Between June and July of this year, Zanjani utilized BitBank to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin to the IRGC.
Secretary Bessent sent a clear warning to anyone seeking economic partnership with Iran. “If you support the Iranian regime,” he said, “the Department of the Treasury will sanction you.”