Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino disputed a Senate report alleging delays in blocking Iran-linked wallets by presenting data on the company’s freeze timing. Ardoino said Tether had frozen flagged addresses an average of four weeks before the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing issued official designations since 2023. He added that in 99% of cases, Tether acted before blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis applied labels to the same wallets. The company’s statement referenced a post Ardoino published on October 19, in which he accused Senator Richard Blumenthal’s analysis of overlooking this temporal pattern. Ardoino’s figures, however, remain company assertions without an independently verified dataset. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had previously reported that 84% of 846 Iran-linked wallets used USDT exclusively or nearly exclusively, and that investigators found only five of 39 addresses tied to a Hezbollah money launderer had been frozen by Tether before March 2024, when the remaining 34 were blocked. According to the report, more than $34.6 million in USDT left those wallets after the seizure notice was published. Tether also cited internal data showing nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT frozen during 2026, including actions involving over $344 million across two addresses in April and more than $130 million across four wallets in July. U.S. authorities have requested investigations into Tether’s sanctions and anti-money-laundering practices, citing potential violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. A separate civil forfeiture complaint filed in September 2026 seeks to seize $61.2 million in USDT held across ten TRON addresses linked to Iranian oil sales, with Tether having frozen those addresses in June and July 2025. The case remains unresolved, with a warrant issued in September 2026 authorizing government custody of the assets. Ardoino’s post framed the timing of Tether’s actions as evidence of proactive compliance, while the Senate report emphasized gaps in the company’s response to sanctioned entities. No independent verification of the averages or volume decline claims has been published.