WASHINGTON -- US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new effort to ramp up the pressure on Tehran, saying the United States is "launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe."
"Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone," Bessent told a news conference on August 24, days after he and President Donald Trump warned of an "economic D-Day."
The announcement came nearly six months after the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has roiled global markets by choking off oil supplies from the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz.
The US is "ending" the threat from Iran rather than "managing" it, Bessent asserted, warning third countries that the United States will "be uncompromising in targeting any source of the [Iranian] regime's illicit revenue."
Bessent said that Trump was making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests, and that ever country would be given a defined timeline to "shut down...Iran-related activity we have identified."
He declined to specify timelines but said "we do not have infinite pattence here."
The US Treasury Department has "mapped the networks, facilitators, and financial channels that Iran uses to smuggle oil, evade sanctions, and fund terror," Bessent said, and the US "will be uncompromising in targeting any source of the regime’s illicit revenue.
The Treasury Department said it had identified five sectors that Iran is using to prop up its economy -- digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping -- and is imposing new sanctions on nearly 60 entities, individuals, and vessels.
Any country supporting Iran must be prepared to face US sanctions, he said, while "the Iranian regime faces a clear choice: severe global isolation or a path to reintegration with the global economy."
"We are going to hold everyone accountable, and this is economic asphyxiation of this regime," Bessent said.
Telegraphing the new effort last week without giving details, Bessent suggested that the existing US blockade on Iranan ports combined with what he said would be "the toughest sanctions in history" would make new military operations against Iran less likely to be needed.
But defense chief Pete Hegseth stressed that the use of military force was not being ruled out. "By no means are we foreclosing using kinetic strikes anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz or around Iran," he told reporters.
Large-scale attacks have abated, but on-again, off-again negotiations have not produced an agreement to end the war, free up the Strait of Hormuz, which handled 20 percent of global oil shipments before the war, or resolve the decades-old dispute over Iran's nuclear activities.
When asked whether the US would target China for continuing to buy Iranian oil, Bessent said, We are confident that everyone wants the Strait reopened, and for energy prices to come back down."
Separately, he said, "Keep in mind that the Chinese get 50 percent [of their] energy from inside the Gulf. So it would do them a big service to get with the program."
Earlier on August 24, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, “Sanctions and pressure will not help resolve problems. They will only heighten tensions and escalate the situation, which serves no party's interests."
In comments quoted by the China Daily, Lin urged those involved to return to dialogue as soon as possible and seek a political settlement. Trump is sceduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington in late September.
In comments to broadcaster CNBC last week about the new measures, Bessent said, "We are going to collapse this regime." Trump, in a social media post on August 24, wrote: "IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING."
Iran's economy minister told state television that Tehran was anticipating new US measures and is "ready and has a two-year plan to manage these events."
"They have done everything they could to test the determination of the Iranian people and the country's officials, but they have failed every time. It seems they wished to suffer yet another defeat," Ali Madanizadeh said.
In a sign of persistent trouble for Iran's battered economy, however, the country's rial currency fell to a new low against the US dollar on the open market on August 24.
Mehdi Ghodsi, senior economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, suggested that sanctions may not produce the produce the political response Washington expects.
“The government is much more stubborn than this," Ghodsi told RFE/RL. "The war has killed many of the regime's leaders and destroyed much of its infrastructure, but the government still sticks to its position.”
“The country is heading in a direction where nothing but destruction awaits it,” he said, but added: “For those running the country, it doesn't really matter where the country is heading."