This is BankRegPulse Intelligence Brief for Monday, March 2, 2026.

The single most important thing on your desk this morning: the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei is an active OFAC compliance event.

Not background context.

Not something to monitor.

An event that requires action now.

Layered on top of that, energy credit stress scenarios built last week are already outdated.

And federal AI policy just revealed itself to be far more fragmented than most banks assumed.

Let's get into it.

Start with Iran.

Khamenei is dead.

Alireza Arafi has been named interim Supreme Leader.

This is the most significant Iranian leadership transition in decades — and it is a direct OFAC screening trigger.

When Iranian government leadership changes, the relationships between SDN-listed individuals and newly relevant entities shift.

Banks with Iranian government counterparties, IRGC-adjacent correspondent relationships, or trade finance touching Iranian state entities should not wait for a formal OFAC notice.

Run a targeted screening review now.

The designation landscape will move faster than the publication cycle.

The broader conflict — Operation Epic Fury, now in its fourth day — is also reshaping energy credit exposure in real time.

Iranian drone strikes have taken Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery offline.

That's approximately 550,000 barrels per day of capacity, gone.

Add that to the Qatar LNG halt already disrupting European industrial credit, plus the threatened Strait of Hormuz closure, and banks are now looking at three simultaneous energy infrastructure disruptions — not one.

If your stress scenarios were built for a single-channel shock, they need to be rebuilt.

President Trump has signaled this could run four weeks.

That is a sustained disruption assumption, not a short-duration one.

Also worth noting on the Gulf picture: the UAE closed its stock market for two days following Iranian strikes.

Forty-one percent of scheduled Middle East flights were cancelled.

And U.S.

F-15s were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses — meaning the conflict perimeter now extends to a Gulf Cooperation Council member.

Banks with UAE-listed securities, aviation finance exposure, or collateral positions tied to Gulf markets should be verifying those positions today.

Now to the Russian and Belarus sanctions general license stack published in the Federal Register.

The headline here is: most of what was published is already expired.

GLs 126, 127, 128A, and the 131 series are all expired.

Their appearance today reflects publication lag — no new action required.

What does require attention: GL 128B, authorizing Lukoil International GmbH retail station operations outside Russia, remains active through April 29, 2026.

GL 130, covering five specific Bulgarian Lukoil entities, runs through the same date.

GL 124B covering Caspian Pipeline Consortium operations is indefinitely active.

Any residual Rosneft or Lukoil exposure outside those three specific authorizations is a compliance verification item.

Confirm those positions were wound down within the correct windows.

One more item on Belarus: GL 12 authorizes transactions involving three specific aircraft — tail numbers EW-001PA, EW-001PB, and EW-001PH — effective November 4, 2025.

There's a four-month gap between OFAC issuance and today's Federal Register publication.

Banks that blocked transactions on those aircraft after November 4 should review those transaction logs.

Finally, federal AI policy.

Treasury Secretary Bessent confirmed the termination of all Anthropic Claude products across the department.

On the same day, the Wall Street Journal reported that CENTCOM is actively using Claude for Iran intelligence operations.

That contradiction is the story.

Federal AI procurement is agency-by-agency, not government-wide.

Banks that have been reading the Claude ban as a unified federal signal should stop — it isn't one.

Separately, Anthropic suffered an international service outage on the same day as the Treasury termination.

The practical lesson: AI vendor continuity cannot be assumed.

Banks with Anthropic products embedded in compliance or AML workflows should confirm documented backup procedures are current and tested.

This has been BankRegPulse Intelligence Brief.

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