The widening Iran war is casting a spotlight on the country’s cryptocurrency system that analysts estimate handled $7.8 billion in activity last year, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps believed to be a central player.

Washington has been imposing sanctions on Iran for decades, and the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran led to a local collapse in December, with the Iranian rial hitting a new low against the US dollar in January.

“There is effectively no functioning economy,” Alan Eyre – the only US career diplomat who was a core member of the American nuclear negotiating team from the start of talks in 2010 until the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – told The National.

“It was…