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The Trump administration has announced it will roll out a sweeping sanctions regime against Iran over the coming weeks, with the goal of “sever[ing] every economic lifeline” to Iran and its 92 million residents.
The “economic d-day” plan, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” was unveiled by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a press conference on Monday. The plan involves a wide-ranging sanctions regime, including an expanded mechanism for secondary sanctions that could be unrolled in coming weeks if Iran doesn’t soften its positions in negotiations or if allied countries like China don’t comply.
The department said that it has identified 60 entities and countries it’s prepared to impose secondary sanctions on soon. Bessent also called for the shuttering of every branch of the state-owned Bank Melli, Iran’s largest bank, which has operations in about a dozen countries, including the U.K. and France.
“Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” Bessent said. “Beginning today, the actions of [the] Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the evil Iranian regime.”
Bessent claimed that his department has identified “every node, every facilitator, every network” that Iran maintains financially, including those used to evade the U.S.’s existing decades-long sanctions campaign. When President Donald Trump first announced the plan last week, Bessent said the U.S. is aiming to “collapse” the Iranian government.
Iran’s currency fell to a record low ahead of Bessent’s announcement on Monday.
The sanctions will likely roil global markets even further while doing little to alleviate the energy crisis created by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, analysts said. Throughout negotiations to end the war, Iran has remained firm on its positions — which include sanctions relief — in return for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Indeed, Iran projected resolve in the face of the announcement. The secretary of Iran’s national security council Mohsen Rezaei said that “not a single drop of oil will be exported” from anywhere in the Persian Gulf if the U.S. broadens its economic campaign.
“Iran will regard any country’s participation in or support for America’s economic war against the Iranian people as an act of war,” Rezaei added.
The U.S.’s threats also raise risks of escalating tensions with China, a major trading partner with Iran. If China defies the U.S.’s sweeping new rules, it could face the ire of the Trump administration — a major test of a relationship that would pit the world’s two largest economies against each other.
Bessent even acknowledged in his press conference that implementing the sanctions regime all at once would cause major global turmoil.
“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” he said.
Meanwhile, scholars have long said that sanctions have a disproportionate effect on civilians. Research last year found that U.S. and EU sanctions killed 38 million people between 1971 and 2021, with the U.S.’s sanctions having the worst effects. Essential civilian needs are often impacted by these policies, with the U.S.’s sanctions on Iran having badly disrupted Iranians’ access to goods like medicine.
The National Iranian American Council wrote in a blog post that the Iranian economy was already suffering under the weight of nearly six months of war, noting that the value of the currency plummeted in anticipation of the announcement.
“The first effects of Washington’s new economic offensive are therefore reaching ordinary Iranians before the offensive itself has even been fully unveiled,” the group said.
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