Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the United States is “suffocating” Iran’s leadership through an “economic blockade” launched alongside the US military offensive at the end of February.
Iran’s oil infrastructure is deteriorating, Bessent said in a Fox News interview on Sunday. Storage is rapidly filling, and the regime may have to begin shutting in wells “in the next week.”
“Their oil infrastructure is starting to creak,” he said. “It hasn’t been maintained again because of our decades-long sanctions against them.”
Bessent said this would lead to lower oil prices, pointing to the futures market, which shows that “oil prices are already lower three months, six months, nine months out.”
He referred to the order in March from President Donald Trump on max pressure. “Three weeks ago, the president gave the order to Treasury myself to begin Economic Fury,” referring to his department’s initiative to supplement the Pentagon’s “Operation Epic Fury,” according to AFP.
“We are suffocating the regime, and they are not able to pay their soldiers. This is a real economic blockade, and it is in all parts of government,” he said. “No ships are getting through the strait from the Iranian side.”
US Central Command said on Sunday that 49 commercial vessels had been redirected to comply with US blockade operations against Iran.
“We have upped the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC,” Bessent said, referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“They (IRGC) are a corrupt institution. They have been stealing from the Iranian people for years. They have money offshore. We have tracked that down. We will continue to track that down, and we are going to preserve those assets for the Iranian people on the other side of this conflict,” he said.
On Saturday, Bessent wrote on X that the United States has “complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz and that the blockade on Iran will remain in place until freedom of navigation is restored.
“The BLOCKADE will continue, until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation,” Bessent said, referring to the date before Iran began barring non-hostile commercial vessels from the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian measure pushed the US to take counter actions, imposing a naval blockade to cut off Iran’s oil exports.
For his part, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CBS News that US-led pressure on Iran has left the country's economy “on the precipice of extreme calamity.”
He said Iranians are experiencing “hyper inflation and starting to have hunger.”
