A representation of virtual currency Bitcoin is seen in front of a stock graph in this illustration taken January 8, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday announced that Israel had for the first time seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency belonging to the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and Iran.

Speaking at a conference of Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF), Gallant said there was a “clear line” between Iran and the financing of international terrorism.

“I would like to reveal here for the first time that a few days ago, an extensive and unprecedented operation to expose an axis for financing terrorism using digital currencies was ended,” Gallant said. “This is the first incident of this magnitude, in which an infrastructure led by Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds Force that transferred millions of dollars to be used by terrorist elements was thwarted…By virtue of my authority as the Minister of Defense, I issued an order allowing the seizure of the funds, their confiscation and the transfer of the money to the treasury of the State of Israel.”

Gallant added that since the beginning of the year, Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and “Syrian elements” had been using cryptocurrency to receive funds from money changers and others that were then used for terrorism.

Hezbollah in recent years has profited from Lebanon’s dire economic crisis by taking advantage of currency exchanges and the Lebanese Central Bank (LCB). In January the US Treasury Department sanctioned the Lebanese corporation CTEX Exchange and its founder Hassan Moukalled for acting as a Hezbollah financier and intermediary between the terrorist group and the LCB.

While Gallant on Tuesday said this was the first such seizure of cryptocurrency from Iran and Hezbollah, Israel has carried out digital currency seizures from other groups. In May, Gallant ordered the seizure of 81 digital accounts and hundreds of digital wallets from Hamas, including the direct seizure of approximately $125,000. That same month Israel also released documents indicating it had seized 190 accounts at the Binance crypto exchange, including accounts linked to Islamic State.

Cryptocurrencies and digital wallets were once thought to provide greater anonymity and protection from law enforcement than traditional currencies and bank accounts, and were therefore widely adopted by terrorist groups, drug dealers, hackers, and other illicit groups. But because most cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin rely on an open blockchain that keeps a publicly available ledger of transactions, government agencies have been increasingly able to track and seize crypto.

In April, Hamas announced that it would no longer accept cryptocurrency donations over such fears.

“This comes out of concern about the safety of donors and to spare them any harm,” the terrorist group said in a statement.