U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent detailed an aggressive campaign of economic “asphyxiation” against Iran, warning that the Trump administration could strip banks, firms or other entities that do business with the regime of access to the U.S. dollar-based financial system.
During a fireside chat with FOX Business’ Larry Kudlow on Tuesday at the G20 Finance Ministerial in Asheville, North Carolina, Bessent said the U.S. had identified the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) offshore accounts held by trust companies and luxury real estate holdings.
“Countries that go against this embargo, you’ll cut them off,” Kudlow prefaced, referencing the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. “Secondary sanctions, you take them out of the U.S. dollar system, you’d take them out of the U.S. banking system, you take them out of the Federal Reserve wire, take them out of the SWIFT ledger?”
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“That’s what happened to this bank in Dubai, and it could be entities, it could be airline leasing companies, which we’ll be looking at. It could be anyone who does business with the IRGC, we are tracking down the IRGC’s assets, and I will say it on worldwide TV, just so you know,” Bessent warned, “we know where in the British Virgin Islands your accounts are at these trust companies, we know the $100 million houses you have around the world, and we are going to freeze those.”
“We are going to our partners, we are going to close all of that down. So we are going to go after the regime’s illegitimate assets that they have stolen from the Iranian people, and those can go back to the Iranian people, or they can go to the victims of terror, like the families of the soldiers who are on the USS Cole,” Bessent continued.
Bessent first announced on Aug. 24 that America would impose the economic equivalent of the military campaign that defeated Nazi Germany against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Bessent’s declaration of economic warfare comes after President Donald Trump’s commitment to launch an “economic D-Day” against the Tehran regime. The comprehensive U.S. economic pressure campaign targeting Iran’s already troubled economy could have dramatic effects on the country’s population of more than 90 million people.
“We will stop this regime’s ability to have a nuclear weapon, to have their current highly-enriched uranium to project terrorist power through their proxy networks and to terrorize the Gulf,” Bessent said. “And we are telling people, either you are with us or against us.”
“And everyone says to me, ‘Well, what about China? I said, we have more in common with the Chinese on Iran than we disagree with [them] on. The Chinese agree — Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The Chinese agree that there should be freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. So we have had private discussions with them in terms of achieving those goals.”
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Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.
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