Paolo Ardoino has pushed back on Senator Richard Blumenthal's Iran sanctions report, arguing that it ignores when Tether actually froze flagged wallets. In an October 19 post, he said that since 2023 Tether froze addresses on average four weeks before official OFAC and Israeli NBCTF designations.

Ardoino credited Tether's enforcement work for a 94% drop in Iran-linked stablecoin volume, and said that in 99% of cases Tether froze reported addresses before Chainalysis labeled them.

The Senate staff report, released September 28, found that 84% of 846 Iran-linked wallets used USDT exclusively or nearly exclusively. It also cited 34 Hezbollah-linked addresses flagged in June 2023 that were only blocked in March 2024, after more than $34.6M in USDT left them.

Tether's figures are company assertions without a published dataset. Blumenthal has asked the Treasury and the Justice Department to investigate Tether's sanctions and anti-money-laundering practices.