U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned Iran of an economic D-Day, as it prepared to roll out economic sanctions that target Iran’s trade partners. The remarks followed shortly after Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian defended a memorandum of understanding with the United States as the best way out of a stalled war.
Iran in turn vowed to shut down all oil exports from the Gulf “if the economic war continues”.
Bessent wrote, “President Trump has dismantled Iran’s military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100% of its military factories, and buried its nuclear programme. In a post on X, Mr. 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. 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. He further added, “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. The statement arrives closely on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s call to impose economic sanctions against Iran . The remarks underscore the Trump administration’s shifting stance of an economic rather than military pressure on Tehran as the war drags toward the six-month mark.
And those who fear the danger of defying Tehran ought not to discount the cost of testing Washington,” he said.
Mr. Bessent has urged cooperation with Washington by China, which buys more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler.
Trump has warned of economic consequences against any country that provides “any type of lifeline to Iran”, and Mr. In a defying stance, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghch i also termed the measures as “repetitive scenarios”. “The fact that they [U.S. leaders] have moved on from military operations… to bring up the same old plans shows that they are desperate,” he noted. His remarks came even though Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said the memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June was the best way to move beyond a situation of “neither war nor peace”, adding that Tehran can’t attract investment nearly six months after the war began.
