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From banks to blockchains: US opens new front in Iran sanctions

June 8, 2026 ARTICLES, Energy Market, important 0

The Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange mark an escalation in Washington’s effort to disrupt the financial infrastructure Tehran uses to operate outside the formal banking system. The US Treasury designated Nobitex alongside Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex and sanctioned senior figures connected to Nobitex, including chairman, co-founder and …

Umud is a Washington-based Energy Strategist and Senior Foreign Policy advisor and author of US Energy Diplomacy in the Caspian Sea Basin: Changing Trends Since 2001. He is serving as Faculty Associate – at George Mason University. Umud holds a Ph.D. in International Relations. He comes with extensive expertise and professional experience in global energy market studies, energy security, the geopolitics of climate change, industrial policy for clean energy, as well as foreign policy in the context of climate change and energy transition.

His primary research interests lie in energy diplomacy and energy transition, U.S. energy policy, the geopolitics of energy, Iran-Turkey relations, as well as Iran-Russia relations, the Caspian Sea region, Central Asia and the GCC. He has written about the geopolitics of energy and natural gas, political economy of hydrocarbon states, sustainable cities and mobility, the pace and trajectory of energy transition, the geopolitics of US sanctions against Iran oil exports, and the geopolitics of energy in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, Central Asia, and Caspian Sea Region.