Hong Kong has long functioned as a central node in China's effort to help Iran circumvent sweeping international sanctions, enabling billions of dollars to flow through shell companies with minimal obstruction, according to the Wall Street Journal. The city's ease of company registration allows sanctioned entities to quickly reconstitute under new names, effectively neutralising U.S. Treasury designations — a dynamic American officials have compared to a game of whack-a-mole. One illustrative case involves Hamed Dehghan, CEO of a Tehran-based trading firm, whom the U.S. Treasury accused in 2019 of using a Hong Kong front company to procure over $1 million in sensitive equipment linked to Iran's missile programme and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Iran's powerful military branch, designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S.) — yet the sanctions did little to stop his operations.