Iran reportedly funneled billions through Binance to fund its military

Key points

• Iran has reportedly still found ways to funnel money through entities like Binance despite previous sanctions against the company and a jail sentence for its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao.
• An Iranian named Babak Zanjani, who has called himself an "antisanction operator," made $850 million in transactions on the exchange until as recently as December 2025, according to internal Binance compliance reports seen by The Wall Street Journal.
• That's on top of another $1.7 billion that the same network may have moved through Binance, as reported earlier by The New York Times and WSJ.
• Binance itself flagged the alleged activity, but Zanjani's main account continued to operate for as long as 15 months and was still open in January 2026, the reports showed.
• Around half of the sum (about $425 million) could have moved through Binance to fund Iran's military, experts told the WSJ.