Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the U.S. is "entering the endgame" against Iran, as his department prepared a set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran that he compared to Allied preparations for D-Day during World War II.
"As Roosevelt and Churchill weighed a campaign that would culminate in the Normandy landings, they asked themselves what could be done ‘to bring the greatest pressure to bear on the enemy,'" Bessent said, claiming that "History has returned that question to Tehran."
"The U.S. Treasury is preparing to expand secondary sanctions on countries and companies doing business with Iran, forcing trading partners to choose between Tehran and access to the dollar-based financial system," Unusual Whales posted Monday, summarizing a paywalled Financial Times report.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned other nations in the region not to join in the administration's "economic war" against Iran, saying the country would "retaliate in a seismic manner."
Unrelated to today's new sanctions package but still noteworthy, the United Arab Emirates announced on Sunday that on Wednesday of last week it had halted all trade with Iran “until further notice,” due to the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile attacks on that country. The U.A.E. announcement is kind of a big deal, because the Emirates has long served as the Islamic Republic's export and financial hub.
Bessent also noted that Iran's currency, the rial, "has never been weaker and inflation has rarely been higher."
While it's impossible to say for sure whether sanctions can collapse the 47-year-old terrorist theocracy, that last part is true enough. The Hudson Institute's Michael Doran reminded X users Sunday: "On the day Trump was elected to his second term, the rial was a little over 700,000. Trump has sent it into a free fall. It's lost about sixty-five percent of its value" in less than two years.
"A little history," Doran also said, "In 1978, the rial was a little over 70 rials to the dollar, meaning that over the years it has lost 99.996% of its value."
President Donald Trump added Monday morning that he believes Iran is already "collapsing" under existing sanctions and the U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports.
Open Source Intel prepared a list of the countries "most exposed" to the new sanctions, and number one on the list was — of course — China: "China buys discounted Iranian oil through intermediary networks. The key question is whether Treasury moves beyond small refiners and targets major Chinese banks."
Targeting those banks might be more of an economic Hiroshima than an economic D-Day, but we'll see.
"At 2 PM EST, we’ll see how far Bessent is willing to go," OSI added. "Whether he targets banks that help move Iranian money, or maybe imposes the 25% tariff on countries that trade with Iran."
I can't put it much better than X user Toni Johnson did: "Remember when Scott worked for the evil Soros and crashed the British pound? Don't underestimate Bessent."
Stay tuned.
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