Israel’s Ministry of Defence ordered the seizure of 187 cryptocurrency wallets it says belong to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ministry announced Monday.
The National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing said it has strong reasons to believe the listed wallets are IRGC property and that they were used to carry out a grave terror crime.
The move targets wallets on public blockchains and aims to freeze the assets tied to those addresses, though the ministry did not provide detailed public proof of the alleged links.
Seizure order and claims
The ministry’s counterterror unit filed a formal order naming the wallets. Officials said the list reflects an investigation into channels used to move funds linked to the IRGC. The IRGC is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., the EU and Israel.
The Israeli announcement frames the action as part of a wider effort to cut off financial flows tied to terrorism.
The defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the evidence behind the linkage. The public document relied on by authorities says the wallets are being used for criminal ends, but the text shared with reporters did not lay out the chain of proof in full.
What blockchain data shows?
Blockchain monitoring firm Elliptic said the 187 addresses have together received $1,500,000,000 in Tether’s USDT over time.
Elliptic’s co-founder and chief scientist, Tom Robinson, warned that his firm cannot definitively confirm the wallets are controlled by the IRGC. He also said the wallets now hold about $1,500,000, a small fraction of the total value that passed through them.
Elliptic added that some addresses on public lists can be controlled by crypto services. Those service wallets can act as onramps and offramps for many users. That means a wallet that handled large volumes may not be the private key of a single actor.
Experts urge caution
Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at the Iran-focused nonprofit Miaan Group, suggested another possibility. He said Israeli agencies might have obtained information by breaching Iranian systems.
He also noted long-standing talk that the IRGC used crypto to skirt sanctions. Rashidi pointed out that many cases can involve intermediaries such as exchanges, banks or firms that are not formally part of a state body but have ties to it.
Those comments underline a key challenge, and that is blockchain records show movement of funds but do not by themselves prove who controls a wallet. Attribution often depends on additional intelligence or on-chain tracing linked to identifiable service infrastructure.
Past incidents and context
This is not an isolated fight over crypto assets, and on June 18, during the period described by some as the Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran, the hacking group Predatory Sparrow, thought to have ties to Israeli actors, attacked Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange.
We reported that hackers reportedly took about $90,000,000 in crypto from Nobitex exchange and then moved those tokens to inaccessible addresses, effectively destroying the funds.
Crypto intelligence firms had earlier said Nobitex was used by actors tied to the IRGC. Those reports helped shape public debate on how exchanges and ledger activity connect to sanctioned groups.
Industry note
In an unrelated move reported earlier, Kraken acquired the assets and tech of Israel-based startup Capitalise.ai. Kraken plans to fold the startup’s natural-language trading system into Kraken Pro later this year. The company did not disclose the deal price. The buyout shows how crypto firms continue to invest in tools that make trading and strategy building easier for users.
Legal steps can follow a seizure order, and the matter may move through courts or through diplomatic channels. Authorities will need to show clear links to sustain long-term controls.
Also Read: Israel Hacking Group Used Nobitex $90M Hack Data To Expose Iranian Operatives: Report