The IRGC is a branch of Iran's armed forces that runs parallel military, naval, aerospace and intelligence operations to defend the Islamic Republic.
BBC Verify's analysis of UKMTO data shows 12 ships reported attacks near Hormuz in the week of 5-11 October, the most since the war began. Oil flows through the strait have already slipped from September's recovery, so operators with fuel or freight exposure are planning on a short record.
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OFAC's Sept. 17 action covers the Tehran exchange, its developer Pishtaz Simorgh and three Dot One executives, over hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin that Treasury says moved to the IRGC in June and July.
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Brent crude settled at $104.28 a barrel on Oct. 8, up 4%, after Axios reported the Pentagon had ordered preparations for renewed strikes on Iran. Trump said the same day he would not attack before the Nov. 3 midterms, a promise that stops at the vote while energy and freight budgets run well past it.
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Washington said it would trade strikes for sanctions. Days later it went back to shooting. For anyone pricing a Gulf voyage, mine risk in the strait was paused last week, not eliminated, and the freight and insurance numbers will keep saying so.
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Gulf producers have restored about 80% of Hormuz crude flows with shuttle runs and a partly restarted Saudi pipeline, Seoul Economic Daily reports. Insurance on those runs and Iran's continued force in the strait keep prices on course to stay elevated through year-end.
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US Air Force bombers have left RAF Fairford for their home bases after six arrests in a British terror inquiry, over a threat Trump says is linked to Iran. The move protects the aircraft, but Britain keeps the base and an Iran-linked proxy threat that its own officials say was already active.
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Montenegro extradited Turkish-Iranian Amir Barati to face US charges over a university hacking campaign that US officials say did $3.4 billion in damage. Where he chose to travel decided the case: police picked him up on holiday in Kotor, nine years after the charged hacking ended.
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Trump is sending about 9,000 troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East while calling more bombing of Iran after Nov. 3 "possible." For oil and rates, the case for a longer war rests on his refusal of an Iranian truce that offered to open the Strait of Hormuz.
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Washington's embassy urged Americans in Britain to exercise caution after police arrested five men near RAF Fairford on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. Its warning covers US-linked organisations and gatherings in Britain, well beyond the Gloucestershire cordon.
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The US is now threatening the state brokering a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran keeps the passage shut pending sanctions relief. Reopening is not a base case.
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An Iran-linked intrusion kept a British generator down for four days while US wastewater plants lost pressure across 12 states. The number that matters now is restoration time.
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Operation Economic Outcast names nearly 60 targets, but the durable change is the standing authority to designate foreign firms in crypto, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.
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The Southern District of New York filed on September 14 to take roughly $61 million in crypto from two China-based firms that used Binance trading accounts, under a standard of proof that stops at more likely than not.
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Six months after strikes damaged facilities in Bahrain and the UAE, AWS says resources held only in Bahrain cannot be restored. Its resiliency guidance leaves cross-region copies to the customer to configure.
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AWS's status update says the strike damage exceeded what its regional and multi-AZ services were built to withstand. Customers who held data in a single zone in Bahrain or in mec1-az2 are being told it is not coming back.
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A health dashboard update from AWS reports customer data lost for good in the Middle East. The account carrying its wording to me is a Thai-language post that a model drafted and a human editor checked.
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Manhattan prosecutors are examining whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that breached US sanctions on Iran, and the compliance numbers the exchange offers in response cover four named venues and about $4 million of flow.
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Iran's Revolutionary Guards say they destroyed a US MQ-1 over the Strait of Hormuz around September 14-15, adding to a claimed tally that US Central Command acknowledges in aggregate but has not confirmed case by case.
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Prosecutors froze ten Tron addresses in June and July before filing on September 14. Getting the money into government hands means Tether destroys the frozen tokens and issues the same value again to an FBI hardware wallet.
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A civil forfeiture complaint in Manhattan targets two Chinese firms and describes more than $1.5 billion in Iranian oil proceeds. Binance appears in it as a venue, and Richard Teng says the exchange is not accused.
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