Gold, flights, cryptocurrency: US vows to go after more than Iran’s oil

ByTech Word News

Frustrated on the military front by the war with Iran, the United States has declared an “economic D-Day” and is threatening to punish any country or entity that does business with Tehran in key industries.

The U.S. Treasury has vowed to target Iran’s gold, digital assets and aerospace industry, among other things, in order to limit the few options Iran has left for global trade. Iran uses these sectors “to prop up its declining economy” and to “continue its campaign of destabilization and terrorism in the region and around the world,” the finance ministry said declaration on Monday.

Iranian officials dismissed the Trump administration’s statement as a provocation. This was announced by the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declaration on social media on Monday that Iran’s trading partners are not taking the new threats seriously.

The Treasury Department’s wide-ranging announcement left many questions, including how far the United States is willing to go to punish Iran’s major trading partners, such as China. And Iran has long found ways around those measures, including by trading with Russia and its neighbors in the region.

But even though declaration served as a warning to certain industries, it did not immediately blacklist all involved individuals and companies, allowing time for negotiations. But the threat of a more aggressive economic attack through new US sanctions came less than a week after the United Arab Emirates, one of Iran’s main trading partners, announced plans to freeze all trade and financial transactions with the country.

Mahdi Ghodsi, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, said the new blanket sanctions proposed by the United States hit ordinary Iranians the hardest. As in war, Mr. Ghodsi said, “civilians are the victims” in economic conflict.

Here are the sectors the United States has threatened with additional sanctions.

The United States has been enforcing sanctions against Iran for decades. And before the first US and Israeli missiles hit Iran on February 28, the country’s economic suffering was deep and widespread.

Some Iranians have turned to gold to protect their savings against a currency crisis and rising inflation. The precious metal is seen as a safer asset than Iran’s currency, the rial, which hit record lows on Monday after fresh threats of US sanctions.

The National Central Bank has also been loading up on gold for years. During a four-month period in 2025, Iran imported over $1 billion in goldmostly from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and China, according to a leading Iranian economic newspaper.

But hoarding gold could further slow the economy, Ghodsi said, as more people could hold assets designed to preserve wealth for the long term rather than exchange cash to keep the economy moving.

Iran’s cryptocurrency sector is estimated to be worth nearly $7.8 billion by 2025 estimates from Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company.

The same organization calculated that the volume of funds received in accounts affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rose to more than $3 billion in 2025 from more than $2 billion in 2024, based on data from US and Israeli government agencies.

Like gold, analysts say alternative financial assets have become an important way for Iranian civilians to protect their wealth. The United States has also accused Tehran of using the technology to facilitate illicit money flows.

“The Iranian regime is increasingly turning to cryptocurrencies as a tool of choice to circumvent sanctions, supporting transactions linked” to the Revolutionary Guards, the finance ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The United States has previously targeted Iranian cryptocurrency firms. In June, the finance ministry imposed sanctions on the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, accusing it of helping the government evade sanctions, pay for militant activities and transfer wealth abroad.

One person named in Monday’s announcement was Ivan Obukhov, a Ukrainian national based in the Emirates, who the Treasury Department said “served for years as an intermediary for Iranian shadow fleet vessels” and “facilitated the supply of Iranian oil to the Iranian military and its proxies.”

He is accused of processing more than $100 million worth of cryptocurrency payments since 2023 to facilitate the sale of oil to the Revolutionary Guards.

Economist Ghodsi said the effectiveness of the proposed sanctions would depend on the United States’ ability to identify and isolate “nodes” in Iran’s network of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Private flights are a lifesaver for Iranians who want to visit family outside the country. The new sanctions could put other countries at risk of US retaliation if they allow Iranian commercial aircraft, some of which are linked to the Revolutionary Guards, to land at their airports.

The Treasury Department says Iran uses its airlines to “transport fighter jets, shiploads of weapons and sensitive technology and move gold and money to its proxies,” referring to Iranian-backed militant groups in the region such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

While sanctions against Iran’s aviation industry target airlines inside the country, global air travel continues to feel the effects of the conflict. Fighting caused flights to be diverted early in the war. And the intervention in fuel prices may continue to make air tickets more expensive in the foreseeable future.

The United States, which has imposed sanctions on Iran for decades, imposed a month-long blockade on its supply of oil, the nation’s economic engine.

But while Iran’s oil exports have taken center stage during the war, the country also relies on imports of machinery, electronics and other goods.

Its large domestic economy is self-sufficient in various sectors, Ghodsi said, but Iran still faces shortages of materials such as steel, especially after US strikes damaged or destroyed critical infrastructure during the conflict.

“Iran’s National Shipping Line regularly transports sensitive weapons components and missile precursors, while Iran’s National Tanker Service illegally transports oil for the regime and its military services,” the finance ministry said in a statement.

In July, the department aimed at a group of individuals and companies based outside Iran and accuses them of helping a “shadow fleet” of ships there to evade sanctions.

The Trump administration has not specified which countries, entities or goods will be targeted in the technology sector.

But the Treasury Department said Iran had imported advanced technology for use in its weapons programs.

Analysis from 2025 Kharon, a trade analytics firm, found that the Iranian government-led initiative created a network of overseas companies that facilitated trade in so-called military and civilian dual-use technologies, despite US sanctions.