And yet those banks want to retain SWIFT access. My understanding is that even mainland Chinese banks didn't want to hold accounts for sanctioned entities in Hong Kong in 2020.
You really don't want to get cut out of the international banking system. It's not a good time. You lose your correspondent banking relationships and you get rekt.
In fact this happened humorously enough with Bitfinex/Tether and Noble Bank. After they talked Noble into banking them, they lost their correspondent banking relationship in the US and were forced into insolvency. [1]
