Finance Minister Scott Bessent stated that the United States would impose “the toughest sanctions in history” on Tehran, and suggested that plans to ramp up economic pressure meant that large-scale US military attacks on Iran were unlikely to resume any time soon.
“It’s a one-two punch. We have a blockade [of Iranian ports], and we will have the toughest sanctions in history,” Bessent told the American television channel CNBC on 20 August. “This will work in Iran, and we are going to bring down this regime.”
Bessent’s comments came a day after President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “economic war and isolation on a massive scale” and warned that any country providing support to Iran would face serious economic consequences.
In addition to the pressure on Tehran, “any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports or government bodies to provide any lifelines to Iran will itself face enormous economic consequences”,Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late on the evening of 19 August.
“This will be the largest coordinated economic isolation in world history,” said Bessent. “And we will turn to [our allies] and say that you are either with us or against us.”
Neither Trump nor Bessent provided many details.
Bessent told CNBC that he would hold a press conference on 24 August “to talk specifically about what we’re going to do”.
When oil prices rose on 20 August, Bessent said that, in his view, the oil markets were ‘misinterpreting what this economic pressure means. “If we are applying maximum economic pressure, it means there is unlikely to be a large-scale kinetic resurgence.” “Kinetic” in this context refers to military action.
Trump’s warnings came in a social media post in which he stated that Tehran had failed to reach an agreement with the United States.
This post appeared a few hours after Trump had said that negotiations with Iran might resume ‘at some point’, but expressed satisfaction with the current state of affairs, saying: ‘Right now, I think the situation is very good.’
The 60-day negotiation period set out in the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed in June, ended earlier this week. The memorandum was intended to establish a framework for ending the conflict, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and restoring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States claims that Iran breached the June agreement by attacking neutral commercial vessels in the strait in July, leading to the resumption of US military action. The war between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other began on 28 February.