Tether says it froze $550 million in USDT linked to Iran since the start of 2026

Tether says it has blocked $550 million on wallets tied by U.S. authorities to Iran’s Central Bank and entities helping evade sanctions. For PSPs and crypto compliance teams, the point is simple: USDT is still the rail of choice when sanctioned actors want dollar liquidity without touching the traditional financial system.

1. According to Tether, the $550 million was frozen since the start of 2026. The company said $344 million was frozen in April on two addresses at the request of U.S. law enforcement, followed by another $130 million in July on four wallets after new U.S. Treasury sanctions.
2. Tether’s statement came the same day The Wall Street Journal reported on a Senate probe by Democratic lawmakers into how effectively Tether identifies and blocks sanction-evasion addresses. The company says it has the technical ability to do so; the question in Washington is how consistently that ability is used.
3. The WSJ report said wallets sanctioned for ties to Iran overwhelmingly used USDT. It also said Iranian authorities actively use the dollar-backed stablecoin for transfers outside the financial system.
4. Over the past several years, the U.S. and Israel identified hundreds of crypto wallets linked to Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its partners. Most of those wallets transacted in USDT on Tron and Ethereum.
5. The same reporting linked USDT to schemes involving Iranian oil sales and financing the Houthis, including transfers through two identified Chinese networks that handled hundreds of millions of dollars. Iranian exchanges Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex were named as key nodes because they allow USDT-to-rial conversion; the U.S. sanctioned those venues in June.

The timing also matters because the U.S. Department of Justice has started looking into whether Binance Holdings violated Iran sanctions. For high-risk operators, that is the familiar pattern: once regulators start tracing stablecoin flows, exchanges, wallets, and off-ramp partners all move from “infrastructure” to “evidence.”