Iranian commander promotes crypto usage to circumvent US financial sanctions.

The commander of Khatam-al Anbiya Construction, Saeed Muhammad, has reportedly called for the use of crypto to evade sanctions. Khatam-al Anbiya is an engineering firm that’s controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces.

According to a recent Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) report, Muhammad said:

We are demanding a more sophisticated mechanism to circumvent sanctions, and we are calling for the activation of the use of cryptocurrencies, and we want bilateral or multilateral monetary agreements.

For over three decades, Iran has been a target of US sanctions. In the last few years, several Iranian authorities have suggested the use of crypto to bypass these sanctions. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani had proposed the creation of a cryptocurrency, which would be used in trade among the Muslim countries instead of the US dollar. 

At the time, Rouhani had said that the US has used economic sanctions as the "main tools of domineering hegemony and bullying" other countries. Ziya Sadr, an Iranian crypto expert who discussed Bitcoin with local government officials, told the New York Times last year:

Bitcoin cannot be sanctioned by anyone. Not by the U.S. government or any other government or other financial entities.