Μake us preferred on Google As Iran braced for conflict with the U.S., a key regime financier built a secret payment network to keep money flowing to its military forces. At its core was Binance. Until as recently as December, the network, run by Babak Zanjani , an Iranian who is a self-described “antisanction” operator , made $850 million in transactions over two years on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, mostly on a single trading account, internal Binance compliance reports show.