{"id":373124,"date":"2026-04-03T14:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/373124\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:54:09","slug":"israel-goes-after-the-man-behind-irans-crypto-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/373124\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Goes After the Man Behind Iran\u2019s Crypto Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With war raging in the Middle East, we want to bring you as many trusted voices on the news as we can. One such voice is the Israeli journalist Amit Segal. He writes a daily newsletter, <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@amitsegal\/p-192176472\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It\u2019s Noon in Israel<\/a>, which we\u2019re pleased to publish in The Free Press.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!k06P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F469d1cd1-63c3-4dae-841c-10ce1c5b0e7a_1320x30.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"image-link image2 can-restack\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/469d1cd1-63c3-4dae-841c-10ce1c5b0e7a_1320.png\" width=\"1320\" height=\"30\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/469d1cd1-63c3-4dae-841c-10ce1c5b0e7a_1320x30.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:30,&quot;width&quot;:1320,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\"   fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In Iran, more than almost any of the generals and military figures, there is one man whose elimination might truly cause the regime to topple. The man could have been a Silicon Valley billionaire; instead, he joined the Revolutionary Guards: Babak Zanjani, the architect of Iran\u2019s crypto-based sanctions-evasion system.<\/p>\n<p>Zanjani\u2019s is a fascinating story: the son of a railway worker who became a businessman and built a global empire of dozens of companies across Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Tajikistan\u2014designed specifically to bypass sanctions. In 2013, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-middle-east-35739377#:~:text=From%20Dubai%2C%20he%20controlled%20a,reported%20to%20have%20significant%20debts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he was arrested<\/a> for allegedly embezzling $2.7 billion from Iran\u2019s oil revenues and sentenced to death in 2016\u2014but the sentence was never carried out. It turned out the architect of its shadow economy was more valuable to the regime alive than dead. Before and during his arrest he was a media fascination, and was the most famous prisoner in the history of the Islamic Republic. After his gamble on the explosion of crypto netted major returns for the regime, Zanjani <a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/news\/press-releases\/sb0375#:~:text=use%20of%20digital%20assets%20to,largest%20railway%20investments%20in%20history.\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was released<\/a> under supervision in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With war raging in the Middle East, we want to bring you as many trusted voices on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-373124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}