Peace talks appear stalled, or even halted completely - despite President Trump's denials - and the US Department of Treasury is still swinging hard, as part of the ongoing effort to bring about economic collapse in Iran and 'solve' the Hormuz Strait shipping crisis.
In the latest installment of Washington's economic whac-a-mole, the US on Tuesday unveiled sanctions on Iran's biggest cryptocurrency exchange - and several others, for allegedly enabling the Iranian government and blacklisted state institutions to thwart US and EU sanctions.
The largest platform, identified as Nobitex, is believed to have assisted in allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into Iran's central bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a sanctions work-around and parallel financial system.
via Shutterstock"While Iran’s economy is in free fall, the regime has chosen to co-opt digital asset technologies for its own corrupt agenda, including evading sanctions and transferring wealth out of the country," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated in announcing the new action.
"Following the commencement of U.S. combat operations in Iran, Nobitex played a role in protecting and moving assets and funds out of Iran to shield regime wealth despite internet blackouts," the statement added.
Nobitex rejected that it has direct government connections and denied that it has been assisting state institutions. It also said it did nothing to conceal the identities of the owners.
As for ownership, Reuters has documented:
...Nobitex is controlled by two brothers from one of Iran’s most powerful families, with close ties to the new supreme leader. The two are members of the Kharrazi family, one of the most influential dynasties in the Islamic Republic. Corporate records show that when the exchange started, the brothers were listed under a surname rarely used by members of the family.
The brothers were named by the Treasury as Seyed Mohammad Ali Aghamir Mohammad Ali and Seyed Mohammad Aghamir Mohammad Ali, who were also subject to individual sanctions, along with the exchange’s chief executive officer, Amir Hossein Rad.
Last Friday Bessent detailed how the US has seized a total of $1 billion in Iranian cryptocurrency assets to date as part of the economic component of President Trump's Operation Epic Fury.
During a speech before the Reagan National Economic Forum, Bessent stated:
"Just outright grabbed the wallets. Some of them may be typing in right now and might not realize their wallet had been grabbed."
Assets are held "on behalf of the Iranian people" - he described, while framing that the Iranian government had 'stolen' the money from the Iranian populace.
Did this action help fuel BTC's crashing well below $68K on Tuesday?
Today's sanctions against Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex target the Iranian digital asset exchanges responsible for at least 72% of all Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025.
Remember that much of the crypto going into Iran has flowed through Binance over the years. With… https://t.co/5SiHwTTGVC
As we've featured before, for ordinary Iranians - roughly one in six of the population - crypto served as a vital lifeline. Facing relentless rial depreciation (down nearly 90 percent since 2018), chronic inflation of 40 to 50 percent, and frequent power blackouts or internet shutdowns during protests, citizens turned to Bitcoin and stablecoins like U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins (USDT) on the Tron network to hedge savings, facilitate remittances, and move value when traditional banking failed. Spikes in Bitcoin withdrawals to personal wallets often coincided with domestic unrest and regional conflicts.
Yet this parallel financial system has also become a powerful tool for the state. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) steadily tightened its grip on Iran’s crypto flows. IRGC-linked addresses received more than $3 billion in 2025—up from over $2 billion in 2024—with their share rising to more than 50 percent of total Iranian crypto inflows by the end of 2025. These figures represent conservative lower bounds based only on identified and sanctioned wallets.
Washington in the meantime is still entertaining dreams of sparking some kind of anti-regime uprising based on applying the economic squeeze to the Iranian system, but apart from unrest back in January, this has utterly failed to materialize.
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 20:30Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,
AI companies would be required to submit their frontier models on a voluntary review basis before public releases.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 2 intended to address cybersecurity threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the new frontier models being released by major industry players.
Signed in private, the order allows some AI firms to submit their cutting-edge frontier models to a voluntary government review 30 days before a full public release.
That would entail "provid[ing] the Federal Government with access to covered frontier models, subject to appropriate confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protection, use, and nondisclosure requirements, for a period of up to 30 days before they plan to release such models to other trusted partners."
The order also gives the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and other related agencies 30 days to "expedite and prioritize the cyber defense of civilian Federal Government information systems" and establish or expand a federal program that would "enhance AI-enabled defensive tools."
Trump's order also creates an "AI cybersecurity clearinghouse" that would function in "voluntary collaboration" with the AI industry and other critical infrastructure operators. The goal would be to scan for software vulnerabilities in frontier AI models while prioritizing "remediation and distribution of vulnerability patches."
Trump had planned to sign a previous version of this executive order, but said on May 21 that he would delay the signing after becoming dissatisfied with "certain aspects of it."
Earlier that month, the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation announced partnerships with AI giants Google, Microsoft, and xAI to test their new frontier models for potential security risks ahead of full public releases.
Cybersecurity concerns over frontier AI models surged after Anthropic on April 7 announced its Claude Mythos Preview model, which is not yet publicly available due to the company's concerns that bad actors could use it to find critical software exploits.
The Trump administration had previously moved to ban Anthropic from doing business with the federal government after the company refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its Claude models, stating that it was concerned they would be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, which the Pentagon denies.
Despite the ban, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said in April that he had been in talks with the Trump administration over Claude Mythos Preview.
The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit that "educates the public about the implications of advanced AI," on June 2 called for Congress to codify Trump's executive order to "create a legal framework that makes federal government review of advanced AI models mandatory."
Trump's executive order allows AI companies to submit their frontier models to government review on a voluntary basis.
"After the national security wake-up call from advanced AI models like Mythos, we are pleased to see that the Trump administration is taking the risks of these models seriously. However, we know that Big Tech will still try to cut corners on safety and security," Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, said in a statement.
"The next AI models will be even more powerful and will pose even bigger threats to our country than Mythos. These companies need oversight and cannot be trusted to do the right thing voluntarily."
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2026 - 20:05