Bessent calls Monday an economic D-Day against Iran
The Treasury secretary promised the toughest sanctions on record. Tehran says that would be an act of war, and that Hormuz could stop.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called Monday an "economic D-Day" against Iran.
He used the phrase in a Financial Times opinion article on Sunday, and again on X. "At dawn begins an economic D-Day, the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary," he wrote. A press conference is listed for Monday to set out the measures.
Bessent says the campaign is the endgame after US and Israeli strikes that, in his telling, wrecked Iran's military plants and its nuclear programme. The new tool is isolation. He has promised the toughest sanctions on record, on top of a naval blockade, and has said the mix will "collapse this regime". He cited Venezuela and Cuba as proof that blockades work. He has also told CNBC that countries still buying Iranian oil or moving Iranian money will face the Treasury.
President Trump had already framed the week as economic warfare. Any country whose banks, firms or airports give Iran a lifeline, he wrote, will face "tremendous" economic costs.
Iran is answering in the strait. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said that if the economic war continues, not a drop of oil will leave the Strait of Hormuz or the rest of the Persian Gulf. He said any country that joins the US campaign will have committed an act of war. Iran's foreign minister called the new sanctions a sign of desperation.
Oil slipped as traders waited for the fine print. China still takes most of the Iranian barrels that move.
Rezaei's warning to the Gulf was Sunday. This is the date Bessent put on it.
A fifth of the world's seaborne oil goes through Hormuz. Secondary sanctions are meant to scare the buyers, not just Tehran. India sits in that list even when Washington is talking about China. So do the Gulf states Rezaei addressed on Sunday.
Bessent wants this to replace another round of bombing. Markets are pricing a different risk: that Iran answers a ledger with a strait. The 60-day talks clock is gone. What remains is an economic war with a military fuse.
The Monday briefing is the first test of whether "D-Day" is a slogan or a list of banks, ships and countries. Watch tanker traffic through Hormuz after that, and whether Beijing or New Delhi say anything that sounds like compliance.