Treasury Sec to Unveil ‘Economic D-Day’ Against Iran

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will announce massive new sanctions against Iran on Monday, a move he likened to “economic D-Day.”

In an op-ed published in the Financial Times, Bessent said he is launching the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.” He said any nation that associates with Iran will face isolation.

“Iran’s enablers purchase and transport its petroleum,” Bessent wrote. “They facilitate the flow of its finances through exchange houses and free trade zones. They welcome Iran’s flights and maintain registries on its behalf. They turn a blind eye to seaborne fuel transfers and the illicit use of their banks, all while concealing the extent of their complicity.”

Those enablers should “consider the consequences” of continuing their relationships, Bessent said.

“Those who sever Iran’s remaining financial and commercial connectivity will reinvigorate their own,” he wrote. “They will deepen their access to global capital, reinforce confidence in their markets and attain the standing they seek in the world economy.”

But, Bessent continued, “the alternative for those who tether themselves to Tehran is the foreclosure of any path to lasting prosperity.”

“To become a sanctuary for terror is to become, in the eyes of the United States, a global pariah,” he said.

Iran’s head of national security, however, said the country will “retaliate in a seismic manner” to any sanctions and will consider any country supporting sanctions to be committing an act of war.

Bessent compared the sanction strategy to the 1943 Tehran Conference, where Allied leaders planned the defeat of Nazi Germany.

“As Roosevelt and Churchill weighed a campaign that would culminate in the Normandy landings, they asked themselves what could be done ‘to bring the greatest pressure to bear on the enemy,'” he wrote.