The United States launched what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called an unprecedented financial campaign against Iran on Monday, ordering sanctions on more than 60 individuals, entities and vessels while extending secondary sanctions to five sectors: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and maritime shipping.
Bessent said the operation, named “Economic Pariah” and directed by President Donald Trump, was designed to “strangle the Iranian regime” and sever the financial channels that support it. He framed the choice facing Tehran as binary: full global isolation and subsistence-level economic conditions, or a change in course and the possibility of reintegrating into the world economy. The operation, he said, aims to “close all other options.”
Washington has issued timelines to foreign governments requiring them to wind down specific activities with Iran, including shutting overseas branches of Iranian banks. Bessent warned that the US will act unilaterally if governments fail to comply, and that any institution facilitating the laundering of Iranian oil revenues or related money transfers would be cut off from the dollar-based financial system. “No one is beyond the reach of US sanctions,” he said. “Those who stand with us will reap the rewards of our partnership. Those who tie their fate to the Iranian regime should expect to be isolated with it.”
Bessent also declined to rule out secondary sanctions on Chinese banks if they continue processing Iranian transactions, and said a major financial institution would face sanctions before the end of the week. He compared the scale of the financial mobilisation to the Normandy landings of the Second World War.
Trump posted on Truth Social hours before the press conference that “Iran is collapsing entirely.” Bessent linked the campaign to the deteriorating value of the Iranian rial, noting that the exchange rate had already passed two million rials to the dollar and predicting it could reach three million. The Associated Press reported Monday that the rial hit a record low of 2.02 million to the dollar on the informal market, against a central bank official rate of around 1.5 million.
Iran’s own officials have acknowledged the economic strain. President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that the country faces “major imbalances” in water, electricity, gas, fuel and banking, and that Iran is confronting a “comprehensive economic, military and security war.” Central Bank Governor Abdulnasser Hemmati said, according to the Iranian Tasnim news agency, that authorities had anticipated difficult conditions and began stockpiling foreign currencies at multiple locations from January onwards, with the goal of securing imports of basic goods and medicine.
Official Iranian statistics published by Iran’s Statistical Centre and reported by Reuters on 17 August showed annual inflation reaching 66% in July, with consumer prices up 87.9% year-on-year and food prices rising 128%. Three Iranian officials told Reuters that authorities fear further US sanctions could deepen economic hardship and trigger fresh unrest. A civil servant in Yazd told the agency his salary runs out within days and that meat and chicken have disappeared from his family’s table; business owners described layoffs and closures as trade halted and costs climbed.
Pressure on oil exports has also intensified. Data from shipping analytics firm Kpler, cited by Reuters, showed Iranian oil shipments to China falling to approximately 534,000 barrels per day in August, down from 823,000 in July and well below the 1.58 million barrels per day recorded earlier in the year.
Iran’s National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei raised the prospect of closing the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, warning that if the “economic war” continues, not “a single drop of oil” will be exported through Hormuz or anywhere else in the region.
