While the US tries to block Iran’s access to international banks, dollars, oil revenues, and intermediary companies, and Israel seeks and blocks the financial infrastructure of the IRGC and its proxies, Tehran has a partner interested in the exact opposite. Russia is helping Iran build its own payment channels, less dependent on the Western financial system.
Author: Pavel Shveiko
On September 14, 2026, this story received a rather specific name — VTB.
The US Department of the Treasury included one of the largest Russian state banks in the sanctions circuit for Iran. And it’s important not to get confused here: VTB is not under American sanctions for the first time. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the bank was already under strict US blocking restrictions. The news is different — now VTB has come under the action of American Executive Order 13902 for working in Iran’s financial sector.
And this already changes the position of those who work neither in Russia nor in Iran.
Washington separately warned foreign financial institutions: after the new Iranian basis, continuing significant operations with VTB increases the risk of secondary sanctions. Simply put, the problem may now arise not only for the Russian bank itself. It may appear for a bank in a third country that decides it can somehow work simultaneously with VTB and the American financial system. The US Treasury advises such institutions to terminate relations with VTB.
What Russia built for Iran
The American document is interesting precisely for its details.
According to the US Treasury, VTB in recent years has been opening a banking presence in Iran, establishing correspondent relationships with Iranian financial institutions already under American sanctions, and creating a payment system in Russian rubles and Iranian rials.
There is also a more serious point. Washington claims that VTB took steps to move billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets. Here it is important not to amplify the wording: the US Treasury did not state that all these billions have already been successfully transferred. It writes specifically about steps to move them.
The story, meanwhile, began long before the sanctions on September 14.
VTB’s representation appeared in Iran back in 2023. In January 2025, the head of the bank, Andrey Kostin, announced plans to turn it into a full-fledged branch in Tehran. It was assumed that it would serve Russian-Iranian foreign trade, conduct settlements in national currencies, and engage in trade and export financing.
In September 2025, VTB announced that it had received principal consent from the Central Bank of Iran to open a branch. But something else sounded much more interesting: settlements in the pair ruble — Iranian rial were already available through VTB’s infrastructure. The Russian bank explained the meaning of the project quite frankly — the direct channel was supposed to make international settlements between Russia and Iran cheaper and remove some intermediaries.
So it was not about a symbolic office with a sign in Tehran. A practical financial infrastructure was being built for two states, each of which has long been learning to live under Western sanctions.
In the spring of 2026, plans for expansion had to be slowed down. On March 26, Kostin said that the issue of opening a branch was not being considered at the moment. But already on June 30, he stated that VTB could return to it after a change in the military situation around Iran. The representation itself, meanwhile, was preserved.
So the formula “Russia helps Iran bypass economic isolation” is no longer a political slogan here. At least, the American Treasury has now put a banking document under it.
The US has started hunting not only for Iran
There is another reason why the decision on VTB is more important than another line in the sanctions list.
On August 24, the Donald Trump administration announced Operation Economic Outcast. The American Treasury called the start of the operation Economic D-Day and formulated the goal without much diplomatic phrasing: to block economic channels that support the authorities of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Moreover, Washington is now targeting not only Iran itself. It is going after banks, carriers, intermediaries, exchangers, and companies outside its borders.
On August 28, FinCEN began proceedings against Banque Misr UAE. According to the US Treasury, between January 2024 and June 2026, the bank processed about 1.8 billion dollars for 103 companies that may be related to Iran’s shadow banking network. Washington proposed depriving the bank’s UAE division of access to American correspondent accounts.
On September 4, it was Turkey’s turn. The US imposed sanctions against Golden Global Bank, which, according to the Treasury, conducted operations worth tens of millions of dollars for structures associated with the Quds Force and provided Iran with international banking access. Four days later, the Iranian aviation sector was hit, on September 10 — networks serving Hezbollah and Kata’ib Hezbollah. And on September 14, Russian VTB appeared in this chain.
The sequence is quite clear. Washington is trying to make servicing Iran so dangerous for foreign banks and businesses that the income from such work no longer justifies the risk of losing access to the dollar.
Russia is doing exactly the opposite — helping reduce Tehran’s dependence on those channels that Washington can block.
And here Israel appears
For Israel, this is not an abstract financial war somewhere between Washington and Moscow.
The money that the IRGC can receive, save, or withdraw from sanctions can further finance weapons, purchases, missile programs, and Iranian proxies. Therefore, Israel has long been trying to work not only at the endpoint where the money has already reached Hezbollah but also along the financial chain itself.
On July 1, 2026, Defense Minister Israel Katz signed sanctions orders against 37 cryptocurrency wallets, which, according to the Israeli National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing, were part of the IRGC’s infrastructure. More than 24 million shekels in cryptocurrencies were identified in the wallets; Israel links this network, among other things, to the financing of Hezbollah.
Even earlier, Israeli intelligence and the NBCTF uncovered the so-called Iranian Shadow Consortium led by Sepehr Energy Jahan. According to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, through a network of front companies, Iranian security forces sell oil worth billions of dollars a year, bypassing international restrictions, and the proceeds are used for military infrastructure and terrorism financing.
And here the Russian part becomes almost inevitable for Israel.
Earlier, NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency, analyzing Ukraine’s joining the next European sanctions against Iran, already wrote about how the Russian war against Ukraine and Iranian military infrastructure are increasingly existing as two different stories. Iran helped Russia with weapons and technologies, Ukraine gradually includes Iran in its own sanctions policy, and now the US officially points to a major Russian bank as an element of the financial infrastructure helping Tehran bypass restrictions.
For Israel, the question now sounds unpleasantly simple: if the Russian banking infrastructure helps Iran maintain financial breathing, why should it be considered separately from other Iranian channels?
Can Israel hit VTB itself
Yes, but not like the US.
Israel does not have the American dollar, the global network of correspondent accounts, and the ability to put almost any major foreign bank before a choice: refuse a dubious operation or risk access to the US financial system. Here, Washington’s capabilities are simply not available to Jerusalem, and pretending otherwise would be self-deception.
But Israel has something else.
The National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing at the Ministry of Defense works with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies, and financial regulators. Israeli legislation allows for the application of designations, blocking orders, arrest, and confiscation of assets if their connection to terrorist organizations or terrorism financing is proven. The NBCTF also directly indicates international cooperation with foreign partners and financial institutions as one of its tasks.
This is the most interesting direction.
If Israeli intelligence discovers not just a “Russian bank trading with Iran,” but specific accounts, companies, payment chains, cryptocurrency wallets, or intermediaries through which money goes to the IRGC, the Quds Force, or organizations like Hezbollah, such material can already be turned into a sanctions dossier.
And it is not necessary for the last signature under it to be put by Israel.
The most painful combination may look different: Israeli intelligence establishes the chain, the NBCTF documents the connection to terrorism financing, the information goes to the Americans and other partners, and then OFAC does what it does best — turns a banking operation into a risk of losing the American market.
That is why the VTB story is more interesting for Israel than another Russian statement about a “strategic partnership” with Iran.
You can hit not only the bank
There is also the oil part of the system.
Iran needs more than just a bank capable of making a payment. First, it needs to get the money itself. A significant part of this chain begins with the sale of oil: extraction, a fictitious owner of the cargo, tanker, transshipment, trader, shell company, bank, exchanger — and only then do the funds return to the structures Tehran wanted to transfer them to.
These are the constructions Israel is already trying to uncover. The Sepehr Energy Jahan story showed that the Israeli side considers oil and commercial companies not separate from terrorism if the proceeds ultimately go to Iran’s security structures.
Therefore, the next logical question concerns not only VTB.
Which Russian companies service Iranian payments? Who helps convert rubles and rials? Which intermediaries connect trade with the financial system of third countries? Is Russian infrastructure used to service IRGC companies? Where do these funds go next?
There is no public answer to some of these questions yet. And here you cannot skip over the evidence. The American document against VTB is serious, but by itself, it does not yet provide grounds to record any Russian-Iranian trade operation as terrorism financing.
It will have to be sorted out by chains.
Ukraine is not on the sidelines in this story either
For Kyiv, VTB has long been part of the Russian state financial system operating during the war against Ukraine. Now the same bank is also in the US Iranian sanctions circuit.
This strengthens the argument that has become increasingly obvious in recent years: Russian-Iranian cooperation cannot be conveniently sorted into different folders — here “Ukraine,” here “Israel,” and here separately “sanctions.”
Iranian Shahed technology came into the Russian war against Ukraine. Moscow and Tehran were building settlements outside the Western financial system. Iranian security structures are looking for money for their own programs and proxies, which directly threaten Israel. And Russian structures, according to the US, help this financial system work.
Therefore, Kyiv and Jerusalem have another area of quite practical cooperation: not statements about “coinciding threats,” but the exchange of information about companies, logistics, technologies, and financial intermediaries that simultaneously work between Russia and Iran.
VTB may be only the first Russian name
So far, the main blow has been dealt by Washington.
The US is capable of doing what Israel cannot do on its own: making a foreign bank think about whether a few profitable operations with Russia and Iran are worth the risk of losing correspondent accounts in America. After September 14, this risk for VTB’s partners has become significantly higher.
Israel’s advantage lies elsewhere — in the ability to find hidden connections between formally ordinary business, oil, cryptocurrency, intermediaries, and IRGC structures. This is the model Israel has already applied against Iranian wallets and oil networks.
Therefore, the next step looks quite obvious. If Moscow decided to help Tehran maintain financial channels at a time when the US and Israel are trying to close them, Russian intermediaries of these channels should stop being invisible to Israel just because they are located in Russia.
Perhaps the VTB story has just marked a new boundary.
Russia has become accustomed to thinking that cooperation with Iran allows two sanctioned states to jointly build an alternative settlement system and thereby reduce Western pressure. Now the Americans are trying to turn this very help into an additional source of sanctions risk.
And Israel has another choice: to continue hunting only for Iranian money at the end of the route or to start looking more closely at those who help this money make the journey at all.