Research Domain

Threat Finance and Sanctions

Research on threat-finance networks, sanctions enforcement architecture, and the control structures that make financial denial effective.

OFAC · IEEPA · AML / BSA · CAATSA · FATF
Domain Statement

What this domain covers

Sanctions and illicit finance are treated here as a single problem: money moves through nodes, and enforcement works by identifying which nodes carry load and which controls actually bind. Research in this domain builds the classification structures, control matrices, and evidentiary standards that determine whether a designation, a screening decision, or a counterparty judgment holds up.

Analytic questions

  • Where does threat-finance exposure concentrate in a network, a counterparty, or a portfolio?
  • Which controls bind at which node types, and where do they fail?
  • What evidentiary basis does a designation or enforcement action actually require?
  • How do financial, trade, and jurisdictional instruments combine into coherent pressure?

Methods Applied

  • Node classification and control mapping
  • Beneficial-ownership resolution
  • Tiered evidence standards
  • Falsifiable indicator design

Related Advisory

Standards

Publications

Published work in this domain

Taliban Financial Accountability and Aid Integrity Act

A legislative discussion draft that controls every U.S. dollar bound for Afghanistan, closes the OFAC General License 20 exception, and keeps the Afghan central bank reserves out of Taliban hands by statute. Published in the Government & Legislation domain.
LD-2026-01 · 5 Oct 2026

Hostile State Asset Denial and Settlement Act

A legislative series: a discussion draft that puts the blocking, confiscation, and use of a hostile state’s assets under the control of Congress, an adversarial review of the twenty-two challenges it would face in United States and international fora, and the drafting memorandum behind its three-tier structure. Published in the Government & Legislation domain.
LD-2026-02 · 5 Oct 2026

Iran’s Declining Bargaining Range

Why Iran cannot outlast the blockade, the sanctions and the recurring strikes, why a settlement now is worth more to Tehran than a later one, and the legal authority available for each round of the campaign. Published in the Statecraft & Policy domain.
WP-2026 · 5 Oct 2026

Asymmetric Denial

The cost-exchange structure of the blockade phase of the 2026 Iran war: favorable against Iran on endurance, not yet favorable beyond it, and the six measures that decide whether it becomes so. Published in the Statecraft & Policy domain.
WP-2026 · 21 Sep 2026

Credit and Power

The decoupling of dollar and Treasury specialness: the funding instruments of American power are under measured pressure, and the deciding constraint has become internal. Published in the Statecraft & Policy domain.
WP-2026 · Aug 2026

Adversarial-Cost Screening

A validation framework for export control, sanctions, and supply-chain counterparty programs: three structural defects that process metrics cannot see, and the framework that corrects them. Published in the Export Controls & Technology domain.
SCREEN-01 · 13 Aug 2026

Cleared Does Not Mean Examined

Why a compliance screening program can pass every audit and still not detect the thing it exists to catch. A screening program learns only from the counterparties it flags; the ones it clears teach it nothing. The correction is a random-sample audit of cleared counterparties — and this is now a False Claims Act question.
SB-2026-03 · 9 Aug 2026

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