Bessent announces campaign to create "economic onslaught" against Iran and its partners

Washington — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday announced Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump administration's ramped-up push to use economic tools to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war with Iran. 

"Today, at President Trump's direction, the United States Treasury has begun Operation Economic Outcast, an unprecedented campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers," Bessent said. "In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe." 

The operation expands the categories for secondary sanctions on entities and countries that transact with Tehran and also introduces new sanctions across a variety of vital sectors, including digital assets, gold, aviation, technology and shipping. 

Bessent said any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran "will be removed from the U.S. dollar system. The clock just started ticking." 

Many of the secondary sanctions, he said, won't be immediate. 

"We are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior," Bessent said. "Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious." 

The treasury secretary did say he expects an announcement of a major financial institution being sanctioned by the end of this week. 

Bessent said the president is making phone calls to world leaders to cease their interactions with the Iranian regime. Bessent declined to name any names when asked by CBS News, and didn't get into the timeline. 

"We do not have infinite patience here," he told CBS News. 

Bessent said this economic pressure campaign "will not end until this regime stands alone." 

Asked whether Chinese banks that finance Iranian oil imports would be among those hit with the punishing financial measures, Bessent said that "no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions." 

He also criticized countries that engage in trade with Iran — which includes U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf like the United Arab Emirates — as guilty of "appeasement."

Last week, UAE said it has suspended financial and economic transactions with Iran, potentially threatening Tehran's access to a major source of imports and a financial back door to the world.

Bessent also said that Iran's Bank Melli, which has branches across the Gulf "must be shuttered and dark." 

But not all think that these actions will cause as much harm as the touted by Bessent and the administration.

"This was not economic D-Day," said Brett Erickson, a Washington-based sanctions expert who runs Obsidian Risk Advisors. "It was something in the middle.The core constraint facing the United States in the Iran War is the global economic timeline. If the United States is unwilling to meaningfully target China, can Washington reasonably justify damaging our international relations and global standing, for a strategy with only a farfetched likelihood of achieving victory?" 

The move is part of the Trump administration's effort to apply economic tools to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and eventually end the war that the administration originally said would last four to six weeks. That war is now in its sixth month. 

After months of military operations and failed negotiations, Bessent plans to outline the "single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary." 

"President Trump has dismantled Iran's military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program," Bessent wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday. "We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."

"IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING!!!" Mr. Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social. The president has been insisting Iran has fallen for months. 

This will be the latest round of Treasury action that targets Iran's economy. On Aug. 7, the department levied sanctions against a number of companies and individuals that it alleged laundered hundreds of millions of dollars. It was the eighth such action since the start of the second Trump administration. 

"Every facilitator that keeps the regime afloat is putting a target on its own back," Bessent said in a statement at the time. "Treasury will continue to expose these networks and cut them off from the U.S. financial system."

Specifically, the department designated Shahr Bank and two Dubai-based exchange houses, Titan Exchange and Alps International, that it says helped Shahr Bank retrieve oil revenue for major Iranian exporters, including the National Iranian Oil Company and Naftiran Intertrade Co. 

Several Iranian nationals were also designated, including Shahr Bank employee Saeed Ghasempour, who allegedly coordinated currency conversions with Russia's VTB Bank, and staff members of Iran-based Farab Soroush Afagh Qeshm, who allegedly managed invoices and payments for the scheme. A cluster of shell companies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai — accused of funneling payments through intermediary accounts — was also designated. 

Separately, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned former Fly Baghdad CEO Basheer Abdulkadhim Alwan al-Shabbani for allegedly helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force move fighters, weapons, and money to militia groups in the region. Earlier this week, however, OFAC removed Fly Baghdad from its sanctions list. 

The U.S. has been imposing sanctions on Iran for decades, although Tehran has often found ways to evade sanctions.