How Iran Uses USDT to Fund Its War Machine

Transcript

Let's talk about another downstream effect of crypto and onchain commerce which we're going to call Iran's crypto war machine. So the IRGC has been working on some interesting stuff around the straight of Hormuz and has what I'm going to call a toll booth now where operators can pay $1 a barrel to 2 million per super tanker in Yuan or allegedly stable coins via Tron. So, this will allow people to move through the straight. Um, the system allegedly is live and documented. I believe Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance have both reported on this. And the IRGC, as we know, moved three billion through crypto

in 2025, according to Chain Analysis. And the Ministry of Defense has begun accepting crypto for arms exports. So Chris, I'm going to start with you here before we get to the second part of this. Do we now have the dollar on both sides of the war? Is this like that meme of the missiles and the interceptors that is my tax dollars somehow also my tax dollars? Like what's going on? >> Yeah. Yeah. The Iranians are just keep buying treasuries. That's what it looks like, right? And like we said, the dollar is taking over the world. So it's perpetuating the US dollar as a reserve currency.

>> Even if you hate us, you're gonna use it. Yeah. I mean, look, without um getting myself in too much trouble, um what if they were to keep like what we're saying, great guys, buy even more with st even more stable coins. You like keep going. Yeah, it's a great thing to use. Use as many stable coins as possible. Uh accumulate them like crazy and then all of a sudden um overnight we we freeze and seize. How does that work? Now, of course, they're smart. They're going to move. they're going to they're going to, you know, try to to bridge that over to to Bitcoin and other things, but let's remember like we have freeze and seize capabilities for stable coins. And like I I think if they really are going down that route uh in a sustained way, I

think it opens up uh the IRCG to a lot of risks and and that's one of the beautiful things about stable coins is that those treasuries are sitting somewhere and that somewhere is a centralized accountable entity and you know FFO as you said Austin um and I think it gives our national security apparatus a very good vector not only to freeze and seize but sometimes maybe they just watch it a little it, see where it goes before they freeze and seize it. So, I um I don't understand why anyone in their right mind who's a bad guy would use stable coins.

>> Rom, what do you think? Do you agree with Chris? Disagree? >> You know, Iran, I think, continues to surprise everyone. You got uh them producing Lego videos for every tweet Trump has. Now, they're adopting crypto technology. Uh they're fracturing the US alliances. are getting record revenues on oil. Russia and China tankers are getting through. China's loving the present situation. I think it's embarrassing. I think we haven't prosecuted this conflict effectively. We're now approaching 6 weeks in. Iran is setting terms. Trump has moving delays after delay after delay from March 26 to April 1st to not tomorrow. Um I think uh the Pentagon is way over their skis here.

They made some miscalculations. Um, I'm disappointed as an American in how our leaders have executed and prosecuted this campaign. We still don't have control of the uranium. Uh, they're shooting down American aircraft. It's embarrassing. >> So, I'll say couple of points here. One, I think it's very interesting that they're using USDT. I think as Chris alleges, people greatly underestimate the public part of public blockchains.

I would keep an eye on that space and see what's ultimately going to happen there. I don't know that we'll seize it. I don't know that we'll monitor it. on the actual kinetic war effort. Leaving aside the strait, I'll be honest and say the fact that we've had one aircraft shot down for all of the flights that we put over Iran is actually a pretty good track record and we got both of the pilots back. I don't that part bothers me significantly less, especially an A10 being one of the things shot down. Like I don't know how familiar anybody is with the A-10 Warthog, but that is >> were destroyed. more carefree for destroy shot like you can you know the rescue operation let >> destroying rescue operation stuff I'm

mostly concerned about like live fire aircraft where the enemy destroys them right which is to say that's an A-10 that's an F-15 now shooting down an A10 low altitude strafes you with a machine gun and by the way that thing's not a joke but that is an infantry support vehicle there I'm not totally shocked you could get one of those. Getting an F-15 to me is a little bit more interesting. Like I'd be curious to know how that happened, what they shot it down with, and where those weapons were supplied from because that was not happening earlier.

>> Yeah. Is Russia supplying passive radar >> to the IRGC and why are we pressuring Russia? >> Let me chime in a little bit here. So, I actually have a little bit of experience uh on these types of things. I was on the USS Cure Sergeant in 1995 when we rescued Scott Grady. So, I've I've observed firsthand what we call back in the Marine Corps a trap uh mission. It's the most complex mission uh one of the most complex missions in all the military. Uh was it perfectly flawless, Rob? No, it wasn't flawless because we had some issues with with some of our birds getting stuck in the sand. But what did it do? First off, it really showcased and highlighted American values, right? We galvanized these people. We galvanized every asset. We

said, "You know what? one of our people. We don't care. We're all gonna sacrifice. It's the >> show pain. >> I know. I'm getting I'm gonna get to that. I'm get to that. >> Okay. >> So, we pulled off one of the most strategic difficult Remember when you have a pilot going down. They're flying in a little like parachute. Everyone's going after them. The the weapon system officer uses Siri training. He evaded. He escaped. He did what he was trained to do. And then while everyone was coming, it was a full government action. What it tells you is that when the US government wants to get something done, it typically happens and and man, we haven't gotten it there yet fully in the straight of Hormuse, but we put every instrument of national power to recover that that that uh weapon system officer and it really showcased our values,

right? Gosh, what if every organization was that good, right? Put put your people first, rehearse like hell, accomplished the mission things, you know, and of course, no plan ever ever survives the first shots. So, what did they do? They adjusted and they overcame and they got it done right. So to me that was a huge boost. Saw the president talking about it today. Now look, we talk about the different levels of war. We all want to see this thing get solved, right? And how does it get solved? The straight of Hormuse needs to get open. But I'll remind you that it was an impossible position to begin with. These guys have been ravaging the global international community for the last 50 years. You know, they have killed numerous people. They set look what they did with Hamas and Israel. So

we had we had a choice, right? Could we tolerate that as they were, you know, accelerating their quest to get nuclear weapons? If they were nuclear armed, what position would we be in right now as a globe? You know, particularly with their ability to reach Europe would be a terrible situation. So it's a bad situation. It was a it was a growingly worse situation. You know, is this a is is this is it great to be in a war? It's awful, but where are we? If you talk to um former uh central command, uh I was listening to him on Face the Nation over the weekend. He said, "We're far advanced beyond our military goals than I would have ever expected." So, we forget how young this how how how early we are in this exercise. You know, it's it's it's been what, like 30 something

days. It's it hasn't been that long. >> Well, I mean, you listen to White House and Pentagon, they're saying we just need two to three more weeks and we're pretty much wrapped up. >> But, you know, I would never >> but as a military guy, you can never put a timeline. It has to be events based, right? So I I I I have very um there's no way I could ever criticize the the tactical actions of the US military. I think it's been nearly flawlessly executed. Not perfect, but >> they just they've been Yeah. people being held. >> So that so so the chief this is I just want to clarify when you relieve the chief of staff of the army, it has very little to do with the fighting forces.

Forces are fought by uh combatant command. So Admiral uh Bradley uh oh sorry what's his name? Uh Cooper, not brother Cooper, sorry. Admiral Cooper, Naval Academy graduate. Uh he's the one fighting the fight right now. Naval Academy graduate, uh doing a good job. The the Secretary of the Army, his job is to equip the forces, which is a little bit different. So you have to like kind of separate fighting versus equipping. And I don't know the reasons for that. But um you know, if if they relieved Admiral Cooper, that would be that would be a different message, and it's not. So um long story short, it is what it is. It's a difficult spot. We need to get that straight opened. Uh, I don't know if if Trump, you know, we're not sure what he's gonna do come tomorrow night. Is he gonna take those

bridges out? >> Not >> right, >> Ram. You're gonna say no way. You think he's gonna taco? >> He's playing the ultimatum game. He He can't even talk if he want. He is trying to taco, but it takes two to taco here. He's trying to do the taco. He's been tacoing for weeks. No one's biting the taco, right? He gave another delay, then another delay, then the five days, and now, you know, yet another delay. It's you know the terms are being set by Iran. Iran is saying hey this is what we need. We want a permanent ceasefire and we want compensation for damages. So there's a difference between objectives and those objectives are good or not and how effectively has been prosecuted. A lot of clearly like clearly a lot of miscalculations uh you know were made here and standards

of conduct and warfare were tossed out the window taken out uh leadership that you no longer can negotiate with. It's not good. They know who they're negotiating with. Trump said that we can't communicate with them. They can't communicate. So what what response are we expecting like smoke signals here? And what signal have we sent to China and Russia around how they might conduct warfare against Taiwan, Ukraine or Washington DC? We talk about values. We compromise our own values. That's not how you conduct warfare.

>> What what specifically are you referring to? Well, just the manner of the execution of this campaign. There's interest between goals and methods and ethicacy, right? So, I think I think this is it could have approached us very differently and now we're extend mode. We're in pretend extend mode. It's like, hey, I need two to three more weeks. They can't say it's one more week. That's that's unrealistic. They can't say four weeks as markets will crash. So, they're saying two to three more weeks. It's doggy my homework and then scramble. Let's try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And Trump himself today said he said look the Iranians our agency were clear simply needs to say that they laid mines whether they did or

didn't it would close the straight of Harmuz. So the Pentagon's trying to prove a negative now. We're trying to prove there's no such thing as a black swan. Very hard to prove that. Part of what's interesting to me is the disconnect between the methods used versus Trump's rhetoric, right? Because if you look at the way the war has been prosecuted, like at the tactical level, as Chris was talking about previously, we've mostly dominated. They've shot down what, one, two planes. Um, we bombed our own equipment to prevent it from falling into their hands. American casualties are minimal. A lot of Iranian war fighting infrastructure is absolutely zeroed right now. But Rahm, as you pointed out, we've also

systematically eliminated a majority of their leadership. That is not the sort of war you would normally fight to negotiate in the short term. That's the kind of war you would prosecute to exhaust the enemy and force them to surrender. Right? So that is a certain sort of a plan that by the way, if the US rhetoric from Trump was, we're just going to keep bombing you until either we you give us what we want or there's none of you's left to bomb. In some ways it would seem more aligned because that is more what the military is doing >> and more consistent. Correct. >> Trump Yeah. Trump is trying to send a very different message verbally about we want to negotiate. We're looking for a solution. We want the straight open in the short term. And it it makes me question one of two things, right? One

is is there a lack of coordination internally within the United States? Or two, because Rahm, you said this earlier, so I'm just going to throw this out there. Does Trump know he's full of it? And primarily what he's doing is talking it away to try to keep markets up. >> Oh, of course he's keeping markets up to buy time. Look, there's there's no love loss for the death of the Ayatollah, right? It's a death spot. The the people deserve better. Of course, the trade reform shouldn't be controlled by a regime that seeks nuclear weapons and wants to inflict harm upon its neighbors. Of course, like we all get that, okay? But this isn't going well.

And the public's being misled. I think it's kind of obvious. It's very obvious. Monday of last week, Trump was on the tarmac saying, "We've got 12 points of negotiation and alignment with with Iran." And now Iran is issuing their own terms and we're doing pretend and extend again. Like this hasn't gone well. And it's Hexath takes off for nine days without any press updates. Uh they they haven't acknowledged where they could have done better. You know, it's it's a weird situation when as an American you believe the Iranian characterization of the status of negotiations, which is that they're not happening and you don't trust the Pentagon.

And they fired the former head of the Pentagon spokes the former Pentagon spokesperson who had some credibility, too. The Pentagon still has an account for a trillion dollars in spending. Now, they want $500 billion more. They get into a war. Then they have to go to Congress and ask for funding to deplete munitions. We've burned 10 years of tomahawks. 10 years with the tomahawks and now we need to get a ceasefire because we're off sides. This is a this is like a C minus execution effort.

>> So what do you do, Ron? >> What you do is you hold your public leaders accountable. That's what you do. That's what I'm doing. >> And that's what we have. We have elections coming up, right? So that's the point of democracy and again the the strategic level will will be controlled by those elections. I think tactically it's been a really well prosecuted campaign. Um and look I I think in any conflict there's always things you could do better. Could we have galvanized our uh allies better to to get them on side earlier? I think so. Um, but I guess my question is what do you do? Like it's easy to critique the past, play

armchair, quarterback, but like what do you do from here? >> I agree. It's a cluster. It's a cluster. I don't think everyone's recognized the kind of cluster this is. Okay. My main point is to highlight and recognize that. That's my main it's to say it's a cluster is a non- consensus view right now. That's my main observation. Let's identify the issue. then we can focus the focus on the issue. >> If you like this segment, please like, subscribe, and tune in every Monday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. I'm Austin Campbell, the host of Bips and Bips, along with my friends Rahm Alawalia and Chris Perkins, and our slate of exceptional guests. Every week, we're going to discuss macro, crypto, and the

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