U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether is a go-to tool for the Iranian government to bypass sanctions, a new report from a group of Senate Democrats said.
Democrats on the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence published a report Monday laying out the argument that Tether USDT$1.0000 plays a key role in allowing Iran to conduct transactions that skirt international sanctions.
"Iran's cryptocurrency-based shadow banking network has processed significant volumes of funds and implicates various Iranian interests," the report said, adding that Tether has "repeatedly failed" to block Iran-connected wallets.
"USDT has become a significant financial lifeline within Iran's shadow banking network," the report said.
When Tether does freeze wallets, it sometimes takes weeks, but the company also sometimes responds to requests without actually blacklisting wallets, the report claimed.
"Prior to 2024, Tether did not comprehensively and consistently freeze wallets designated by counter-terrorism agencies and continues to fail to proactively block clearly illicit wallets," the report said. "This absence of deterrence invited abuse: terrorist organizations such as Hamas shifted from transacting in Bitcoin and a mix of cryptocurrencies to promoting USDT."
The report did not include an overall total sum for how much USDT it alleged the Iranian government transacted with, but said the government made an estimated $2 billion in transactions last year.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the document.
The report cast Iran's use of USDT as a broader indictment of crypto more generally, saying "cryptocurrencies are actively undermining the attempts of the United States and its allies to prevent the Islamic Republic's regional terrorism."
In a blog post Monday, Tether said it had "supported nearly $550 million in Iran-linked" freezes, listing a number of recent actions it said it took at the behest of U.S. authorities.
"As governments intensify efforts to disrupt sanctions evasion and terrorist financing, we remain in regular and direct coordination with authorities in the United States and around the world to help ensure that illicit funds can be identified and frozen," Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the post.
