Hidden financial warfare? Iran uses stablecoins to collect tolls through the Strait

Author: Maher, Foresight News

On April 2, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Garib Abadi publicly confirmed at Tehran’s routine press conference that all supertankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz must pay a transit fee to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and that the U.S. dollar settlement channel is explicitly excluded. This statement has formally institutionalized rumors that had previously circulated within the shipping industry—Iran is no longer content to rely on traditional tools of geopolitical brinkmanship; instead, it is turning control of the strait into a financial experiment aimed at dollar hegemony.

The speed at which the charging mechanism is being rolled out has exceeded market expectations.

Citing internal documents from the IRGC Navy, Bloomberg reports that the system completed its technical deployment at the end of March. Iran’s ways of receiving the transit fees in this instance come in only two options: renminbi remittance by wire, or settlement in U.S. dollar stablecoins via a decentralized network.

Iran’s customs authorities have set up a dedicated cryptocurrency exchange window on Geshm Island, ensuring that funds are quickly converted into rials after being credited or transferred to overseas accounts.

This arrangement has been designed with precision.

Traditional international shipping settlement depends on the SWIFT network and the correspondent banking system; any transaction involving Iran will trigger secondary sanctions from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Meanwhile, the combination of the cross-border renminbi payment system and public-chain networks builds a parallel channel that bypasses monitoring of the U.S. dollar.

According to statistics from the London shipping brokerage Braemar, at least two oil tankers flying unknown flags completed renminbi payments and safely passed through the strait by the end of March. Iran’s parliament’s National Security Committee, through the “Strait of Hormuz Transit Management Bill” approved on March 30, provides further domestic legal backing for this mechanism.

Worth noting is that Iran also applies differential fee pricing for tiered vessels based on the degree of their geopolitical association.

Citing information reported by Bloomberg from sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg described the oil-fee standards for the Strait of Hormuz—starting at $0.5 per barrel—and divided into 5 tiers depending on different relationship countries.

• The first tier is special pricing for allies: China and Russia, $0.5–0.7 per barrel, with dedicated green lanes; regular reporting allows vessels to pass freely.

• The second tier is for friendly partners: countries such as India and Pakistan, $0.8–0.9 per barrel.

• The third tier is for neutral countries: African countries, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, $1 per barrel; requires declaration, and after inspection confirms it does not include hostile assets, clearance is granted.

• The fourth tier is for high-risk countries: countries with close ties to the U.S. but without hostile actions toward Iran—for example Japan and South Korea—as well as many countries in the European Union; $1.2–1.5 per barrel. Iran must monitor the entire process, and the approval queue will be longer.

• The fifth tier is the U.S., Israel, and allies—passage is prohibited.

Once supertankers pay the transit fee, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will issue permit codes and route instructions. Ships must fly the national flag of the country with which the transit agreement has been negotiated; in some cases, the ship’s official place of registration must also be changed to that country. When vessels approach the Strait of Hormuz, they must broadcast their transit password via very high frequency (VHF) radio; then a patrol craft will come to meet them and escort them through the strait, staying close to the coastline and guiding them between a set of islands that industry insiders call “Iran’s toll stations.”

This is the first time a sovereign state has included stablecoins as part of strategic-level payment infrastructure.

Unlike the earlier symbolic move by El Salvador to make Bitcoin legal tender, Iran’s choice is mandatory at a commercial scale. The strait accounts for 21% of the world’s seaborne crude oil shipping volume, with more than dozens of vessels transiting per day.

If this mechanism continues to operate, it is expected that more than $20 billion worth of stablecoins per year will flow through digital wallets controlled by Iran, forming a pool of gray liquidity protected by sovereign power.

The deeper shock lies in the chain reaction across shipping insurance and trade finance. The International Group of Protection and Indemnity Clubs (IG) has issued an internal warning, pointing out that paying fees to the IRGC may trigger sanctions-compliance risks for the European Union and the U.K., causing policies to become void. This forces shipowners into a grim trade-off between shipping economics and legal risk: taking a detour around the Cape of Good Hope adds 15 days to the voyage and tens of thousands of dollars in fuel costs, while paying cryptocurrency transit fees involves the risk of account freezes. Some bulk commodity traders have begun trying to restructure routes via intermediaries in Pakistan. Islamabad has recently announced that it will allow 20 international oil tankers to fly the Pakistani flag for passage, effectively providing an offshore outsourcing channel for Iran’s system.

Iran is not the only country doing this. Russia previously announced similar charging policies for the Northern Sea Route and has publicly considered accepting cryptocurrency settlement. This digital-finance logic of turning geographic hubs into “nodes” is reshaping the payment infrastructure for global energy trade.

When merchant ships complete USDT settlement on-chain via an agreement in the anchorage area on Geshm Island, what is completed is not only payment of a transit toll, but also the systematic offloading of the remaining architecture of the Bretton Woods system.

The fragility of this experiment is also evident. Because USDT/USDC are fundamentally still pegged to the U.S. dollar and subject to OFAC tracking, the key risk is how the shadow “fleet” formed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be scaled to “decentralize” exchanges into real-world assets or fiat currency (rial). However, as long as Iran maintains geographic monopoly over the Strait of Hormuz, this financial war—using cryptocurrency as the medium—will continue to rewrite the rulebook for global trade.