By FATIMA HUSSEIN<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 As part of the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing campaign to pressure Iran into a deal that would end an ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel, the U.S. placed sanctions on Iran\u2019s largest digital asset exchange and three other exchanges, Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Included in the sanctions are Iran\u2019s largest digital assets firm Nobitex and its chairman and co-founder, Amir Hossein Rad. Treasury says Nobitex has processed more than 50% of all Iranian digital asset income last year and supports Iran\u2019s vast sanctions evasion network.<\/p>\n
The sanctions come as a pair of semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday that Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire<\/a> in the war<\/a> with the U.S. and Israel.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump has disputed the claim and said talks are continuing.<\/p>\n Treasury accuses Nobitex of moving assets and funds out of the country to shield regime wealth after the start of U.S. combat operations in Iran. A representative from Nobitex could not be reached through email.<\/p>\n U.S. officials maintain that Iran relies heavily on cryptocurrency and other digital assets to evade sanctions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the Reagan National Economic Forum this month, \u201cWe have seized about a billion dollars of their crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s latest announcement is one of a variety of measures put in place to inflict economic pain on Iran. It has also imposed secondary economic sanctions on countries doing business with people, firms, and ships under Iranian control \u2014 including allies like the United Arab Emirates and competitors like China. Banks have received warnings about handling Iranian money.<\/p>\n And last week, the U.S. imposed sanctions<\/a> on Iran\u2019s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is an agency intended to control shipping through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Treasury calls the agency a \u201cscheme to extort international shipping.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the U.S. military has stopped merchant vessels trying to break through a U.S.-led blockade of Iranian ports<\/a>. The U.S. launched the blockade on April 17 after Iran effectively closed the strait after the war in the Middle East<\/a> began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By FATIMA HUSSEIN WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 As part of the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing campaign to pressure Iran into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[46747,34,6475,46746],"class_list":["post-142917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-digital-asset-exchange","tag-iran","tag-iran-sanctions","tag-nobitex"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116683592404096691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}