This week the U.S. Treasury Department levied sanctions on the Al-Qatirji Company, a Syrian-run operation that’s been secretly channeling hundreds of millions in oil money to fund Iran’s terrorist proxies.

Working through 26 separate entities—a mix of front companies, ships, and financial institutions—Al-Qatirji created what amounts to an invisible pipeline for Iranian oil. Al-Qatirji used its fleet of tankers to move Iranian oil past international sanctions straight to buyers in Syria and China. Each tanker delivery triggered a carefully planned series of transactions designed to hide the oil’s origins by laundering the money through Beirut and then through Istanbul’s banking system

The “clean” profits then flowed to two destinations: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Houthi terrorists in Yemen. Treasury officials discovered the Houthis alone received millions each month, while the total operation generated hundreds of millions this year for the Islamic Republic.

What makes the scheme remarkable isn’t just its scale, but how long it operated in plain sight. Eleven of Al-Qatirji’s tankers were already exposed by the United Against Nuclear Iran advocacy group as part of Iran’s “ghost fleet,” yet the network continued moving oil and money until the Treasury finally shut it down on Thursday.

“Iran is increasingly relying on key business partners like the Al-Qatirji Company to fund its destabilizing activities and web of terrorist proxies across the region,” stated Bradley Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

The Treasury’s crackdown comes as former Trump administration Iran envoy Brian Hook, who is positioned to lead the State Department transition team, signals a return to “maximum pressure” against Iran.

“President Trump understands that the chief driver of instability in today’s Middle East is the Iranian regime,” Hook tells CNN. “What President Trump did say in Riyadh was that he would isolate Iran diplomatically and weaken them economically so that they can’t fund all of the violence that’s going on with the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and these proxies that run around Iraq and Syria today, all of whom destabilize Israel and our Gulf partners.”