U.S. seeks to make Iran an ‘economic outcast’ with new sanctions, pressure

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new round of sanctions aimed at Iran on Monday and warned every country that does business with the Islamic Republic to sever those financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.

President Donald Trump’s pledge last week to unleash an “economic D-Day” against Tehran turned out to be new warnings to cut off Iran from the rest of the global economy. Asked why the U.S. was not imposing secondary sanctions on Iran’s trading partners, Bessent told reporters he wanted countries to have an opportunity to shift away from Iran before it was too late.

“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Bessent said.

The Trump administration is struggling to find an off-ramp nearly six months into an unpopular war with an increasingly obstinate Iran. Washington had promised new sanctions would put even more pressure on an Iranian economy already battered by previous penalties and a U.S. naval blockade.

But the announcement Monday provided little detail and did not name which countries could face secondary sanctions. China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are Iran’s largest trade partners.

“We are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are,” Bessent said. “So when the hammer of U.S. Treasury actions falls upon them, they will have no one to blame but themselves.”

Dubbing the campaign “Operation Economic Outcast,” Bessent said Trump has been “making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran and has already seen results.

The UAE announced last week that it was suspending all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran until further notice after a reported missile attack on the Gulf country. Bessent said the UAE decision was “not a coincidence.”

Shortly before the announcement, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said the U.S. is not in an economic position to further restrict Tehran’s relations with other countries.

“Iran’s trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don’t take these statements into account anywhere,” Qalibaf, who has been Iran’s lead negotiator over the past six months, posted on X.

Asked whether the U.S. would target China, Bessent said that “no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions,” despite the fragile trade truce in place between the world’s two largest economies.

“If they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted,” he added.

Experts say the U.S. is likely to carefully calibrate its actions on China, just a month before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit the U.S.

How much the announcement matters “depends on the aggressiveness with which President Trump is willing to enforce it,” said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. “Thus far, despite threatening severe economic consequences for countries that do business with Iran, he has largely given China a pass.”