Bessent announces campaign to create "economic onslaught" against Iran and its partners

Washington — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is holding a press conference Monday at the Treasury Department announcing Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump administration's ramped up push to use economic tools to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war with Iran.

"Today, at President Trump's direction, the United States Treasury has begun Operation Economic Outcast, an unprecedented campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers," Bessent said.

The operation expands the categories for secondary sanctions on entities and countries that transact with Tehran and also introduces new sanctions across a variety of sectors, including digital assets, gold, aviation, technology and shipping.

Bessent is expected to broaden the administration's current sanctions regime with the threat of stronger secondary sanctions on entities and countries that transact with Tehran. The sanctions are part of the Trump administration's effort to apply economic tools to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and eventually end the war that the administration originally said would last four to six weeks. That war is now in its sixth month.

After months of military operations and failed negotiations, Bessent plans to outline the "single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."

"President Trump has dismantled Iran's military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program," Bessent wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday. "We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."

"The Islamic Republic has subsisted by dressing extortion as security guarantees," Bessent continued. "It has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable. Under President Trump, that era is over. And those who fear the danger of defying Tehran ought not to discount the cost of testing Washington. The president has created the conditions to leverage every agency, every authority and action many assumed we would never summon. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains the tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone."

Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared Iran all but defunct, despite Iran's continued resistance to U.S. military efforts.

"IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING!!!" Mr. Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social. The president has been insisting Iran has fallen for months.

This will be the latest round of Treasury action that targets Iran's economy. On Aug. 7, the department levied sanctions against a number of companies and individuals that it alleged laundered hundreds of millions of dollars. It was the eighth such action since the start of the second Trump administration.

"Every facilitator that keeps the regime afloat is putting a target on its own back," Bessent said in a statement at the time. "Treasury will continue to expose these networks and cut them off from the U.S.