Bank Melli, Iran’s largest lender, already faces sanctions that severely limit its ability to operate abroad. Every foreign branch must be shut down, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
The United States threatened sanctions for any country or entity that engages with Iran’s gold, digital assets, aviation, shipping and tech industries. Here’s why that matters.
President Trump’s “Economic D-Day” is intended to break the stalemate with Iran. But decades of sanctions have done little to change the country’s behavior.
Experts warn that a campaign aimed at avoiding military escalation could instead provoke it, as Iranian leaders vow retaliation across the oil-rich Gulf.
The U.S. has spent 20 years promising ‘crippling sanctions’ on Iran. But the latest effort comes with a reverse twist, after military action failed to accomplish President Trump’s goals.
In announcing Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump administration said on Monday that it would involve choking off every last transaction that funnels money to Tehran.
Analysts say Tehran could intensify the dispute militarily after the United States announced new efforts to squeeze Iran’s economy. One Iranian official vowed that “not a single drop of oil” would leave the gulf.
Motorists drive past an anti-American billboard in Tehran on Monday. President Trump has threatened Iran with “economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale.”
Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s new security chief, last month in Tehran. Though hostilities have largely ceased, the United States and Iran are locked in an economic standoff.
In Tehran last month. Before the latest round of sanctions was announced, Iranians were already contending with sky-high inflation and other economic hardships.
Japan had tried to dissuade the U.S. from imposing sanctions on Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court, but the White House pressed ahead.
President Trump appeared to suggest that the United States would impose economic penalties on countries that do business with Iran, though he did not specify what actions he would take.
For weeks, there has been no diplomatic progress, but also no full-scale fighting, as each side seems to believe it can hold out longer than the other.
A butcher in Tehran in July. The United States appears to be betting that putting Iran in a tighter economic stranglehold will succeed where military strikes have not.
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