Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) has released an administrative seizure order naming 187 cryptocurrency wallet addresses alleged to be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, those addresses collectively received about $1.5 billion in USDT (Tether stablecoin) over time.
The seizure order says that although those addresses have “processed” $1.5 billion in USDT historically, the current holdings in those wallets are far less. The NBCTF and Elliptic report that only ~$1.5 million in USDT is now frozen. Elliptic, in its blog post, cautions that it cannot verify that all of the funds are directly linked to the IRGC. Some of the flagged addresses may, in fact, be controlled by exchanges or other cryptocurrency service providers, it said. They clarify that the wallets might be part of shared infrastructure used by many users, not exclusively by IRGC operatives.
Elliptic’s report is based on its Holistic blockchain analytics technology, which it says has been updated so that addresses included in Israel’s NBCTF seizure order are now flagged in its monitoring systems. By sounding the alarm bells, this will enable exchanges, law enforcement, and other industry players to screen transactions involving these addresses. So exchanges or financial institutions will be able to detect if transactions are incoming from, or going to, any of these addresses, helping them avoid inadvertently processing funds tied to suspected IRGC networks.
Tether’s actions & precautionary measures
Because USDT is a centralized stablecoin, meaning that its issuer can freeze or blacklist individual addresses, Tether has gone ahead and done so. As of 13 September 2025, the stablecoin issuer has already blacklisted 39 wallets of the 187 addresses that were flagged off. By doing so, these wallets will no longer be allowed to participate in any further USDT transactions.
There have also been other related enforcement actions and stablecoin seizures in the past. U.S. authorities seized USDT tied to an Iranian individual allegedly involved in drone navigation systems for the IRGC. There have also been earlier sanctions involving IRGC-linked addresses moving hundreds of millions in stablecoins via intermediaries associated with Yemen’s Houthis.