Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled a sweeping sanctions package against Iran on Monday, aimed at severing financial links for the nation of 92 million residents.
The Trump administration has announced it will roll out a sweeping sanctions regime against Iran over the coming weeks, with the goal of severing every economic lifeline to Iran and its 92 million residents. The “economic d-day” plan, dubbed Operation Economic Outcast,
was unveiled by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a press conference on Monday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the U.S. is planning to impose devastating sanctions on Iran as war with the U.S. drags on. The plan involves a wide-ranging sanctions regime, including an expanded mechanism for secondary sanctions that could be unrolled in coming weeks if Iran doesn’t soften its positions in negotiations or if allied countries like China don’t comply.
Operation Economic Outcast and Treasury’s Targets
The department said that it has identified 60 entities and countries it’s prepared to impose secondary sanctions on soon. Bessent also called for the shuttering of every branch of the state-owned Bank Melli, Iran’s largest bank, which has operations in about a dozen countries, including the U.K. and France.
“Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.”
Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary
Bessent claimed that his department has identified every node, every facilitator, every network
that Iran maintains financially, including those used to evade the U.S.’s existing decades-long sanctions campaign. When President Donald Trump first announced the plan last week, Bessent said the U.S. is aiming to “collapse” the Iranian government. Bessent added that beginning today, the actions of the Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the evil Iranian regime.
Ahead of Bessent’s announcement on Monday, Iran’s currency fell to a record low. The National Iranian American Council wrote in a blog post that the Iranian economy was already suffering under the weight of nearly six months of war, noting that the value of the currency plummeted in anticipation of the announcement. The first effects of Washington’s new economic offensive are therefore reaching ordinary Iranians before the offensive itself has even been fully unveiled,
the group said.
Global Market Turmoil and Escalating Threats
The sanctions will likely roil global markets even further while doing little to alleviate the energy crisis created by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, analysts said. Throughout negotiations to end the war, Iran has remained firm on its positions — which include sanctions relief — in return for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Bessent even acknowledged in his press conference that implementing the sanctions regime all at once would cause major global turmoil.
Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?
he said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday unveiled the campaign, but he declined to say which countries would be targeted or when new penalties on Iran’s trading partners would take effect.
The U.S.’s threats also raise risks of escalating tensions with China, a major trading partner with Iran. If China defies the U.S.’s sweeping new rules, it could face the ire of the Trump administration — a major test of a relationship that would pit the world’s two largest economies against each other.
Iranian Defiance and Regional Retaliation Risks
Indeed, Iran projected resolve in the face of the announcement. The secretary of Iran’s national security council Mohsen Rezaei said that not a single drop of oil will be exported
from anywhere in the Persian Gulf if the U.S. broadens its economic campaign. Iran will regard any country’s participation in or support for America’s economic war against the Iranian people as an act of war,
Rezaei added.
Meanwhile, scholars have long said that sanctions have a disproportionate effect on civilians. Research last year found that U.S. and EU sanctions killed 38 million people between 1971 and 2021, with the U.S.’s sanctions having the worst effects. Essential civilian needs are often impacted by these policies, with the U.S.’s sanctions on Iran having badly disrupted Iranians’ access to goods like medicine.
