US sanctions Iranian shadow banking network

The United States on Friday sanctioned over 30 people and entities it said were tied to an Iranian shadow banking network used to launder billions of dollars for sanctioned institutions affiliated with the Islamic Republic.

The network—run by Iranian brothers Mansour, Nasser and Fazlolah Zarringhalam—relied on front companies in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates to evade sanctions and move funds through a parallel financial system, the US Treasury said.

“Iran’s shadow banking system is a critical lifeline for the government through which it accesses the proceeds from its oil sales, moves money, and funds its destabilizing activities,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.

According to the Treasury, the Zarringhalam brothers used Iran-based exchange houses—GCM Exchange, Berelian Exchange and Zarrin Ghalam Exchange—alongside dozens of front companies to facilitate transactions for entities such as the National Iranian Oil Company, the Quds Force, and Iran’s Ministry of Defense.

The operations involved fictitious invoices and payments routed through jurisdictions with limited financial oversight, the department said.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce wrote on X that the network had “laundered billions of dollars for the Iranian government.”

“Under @POTUS’s maximum pressure campaign, we will starve Iran of the funds it uses to further its destabilizing activities.”

Friday’s sanctions were the first US measures targeting Iran’s shadow banking infrastructure since President Trump re-imposed “maximum pressure” on Tehran in February, the department said.

Last Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House had temporarily paused new sanctions in parallel with ongoing nuclear negotiations, citing a directive from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Following Treasury’s announcement, Wall Street Journal reporter Elliot Kaufman wrote on X that the sanctions-pause policy had ended after the newspaper’s coverage. “We can now confirm what we heard Monday and Tuesday: The sanctions‑pause policy has been killed after it was exposed in our WSJ editorial,” he said.