The Treasury moved to sanction Ali Ansari, identified as the personal banker for Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, while pointing to renewed Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and a sprawling web of offshore holdings and exchange houses used to funnel regime money.
The Treasury Department publicly named Dubai-based Ali Ansari as a central financial facilitator tied to the Supreme Leader’s office, saying he moved public wealth into private holdings abroad. Officials linked that activity to efforts by Iran to fund its security services and regime elites while the country stepped back into aggression at sea.
Treasury says Ansari diverted state funds into a global portfolio of real estate and commercial assets, enriching himself and prominent figures within the regime, along with elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Those holdings were allegedly hidden through multiple shell companies and foreign bank accounts to mask ownership and movement of funds.
The list of actions also reached several Iranian exchange houses that Treasury says move billions on behalf of sanctioned Iranian banks, leveraging layers of front companies to obscure transactions. By targeting both the individual facilitator and the financial conduits, the department aimed at the whole pipeline that lets Tehran buy weapons, influence, and operational capability abroad.
“The so-called Supreme Leader is hiding in seclusion while his regime crumbles,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. Treasury added that it will use every available tool to isolate regime elites from the global financial system and to preserve these assets for the Iranian people.
Under the designations, all property and interests in property of the named or blocked persons that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. Entities owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are likewise blocked unless a specific or general license applies.
Violating U.S. sanctions can bring civil or criminal penalties for U.S. and foreign persons, and OFAC may pursue civil penalties on a strict liability basis. The government points to its Economic Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines as the framework for how it assesses and enforces penalties for transactions with designated parties.
The sanctions regime also carries risks for foreign banks that knowingly facilitate significant transactions for designated persons, including the possibility of secondary sanctions or limits on correspondent accounts in the United States. OFAC can bar or condition a foreign financial institution’s ability to open or maintain correspondent or payable-through accounts if it conducts or facilitates significant business for a designated party.
The Treasury said Ansari’s holdings include assets under the Saint Kitts and Nevis-based Smart Global Limited, formed in 2011 under a former name, and that the scheme used numerous jurisdictions to conceal the ultimate beneficiaries. By tracing ownership through those structures, U.S. officials aim to disrupt the money flows that sustain Tehran’s aggressive posture.
Targeting exchange houses and a central financial facilitator is meant to raise the cost of sustaining Iran’s military and intelligence operations abroad. The move is also presented as a tool to deprive regime insiders of offshore wealth and to make it harder for Iran to finance further attacks on international shipping and regional stability.
