Bessent urges G7 to help U.S. attack Iran’s finances

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday urged world leaders at a G7 conference to help the U.S. combat Iranian terrorism by “rooting out the financing that sustains it,” while laying out a new rubric for imposing “aggressive and targeted” sanctions.

“Crushing the threat of terrorism compels all of you to step up and join us,” Bessent said in a speech to the “No Money for Terror” conference in Paris, after claiming that the U.S. often fights alone.

The remarks follow previous calls by President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials for more countries to join its ongoing war against Iran, which continues to wreak havoc on the global economy even as the conflict appears to be locked in an uneasy stalemate.

Bessent boasted at the conference that “no adversary has felt the force of America’s economic statecraft more ruinously than Iran,” crediting a “modernized sanctions architecture” underpinning the effort dubbed “Operation Economic Fury.”

“We are reviewing outdated and obsolete designations to help financial institutions focus on the most sophisticated terrorist financing and sanctions evasion schemes,” Bessent said. “Sanctions should not linger so long that their intended effects create unintended consequences. The most effective actions are aggressive and targeted, with defined timelines to drive specific effects.”

Through its economic and military actions, the U.S. has choked off revenue for Iran’s weapons programs, terrorist proxies and nuclear efforts, while disrupting “tens of billions in the regime’s projected oil revenue,” he said.

U.S. actions have massively disrupted Iran’s “illicit financial flows” and frozen regime-linked cryptocurrency, “and we have intensified our crackdown on Tehran’s shadow banking networks,” he said.

The Cabinet secretary reiterated that the U.S. wants more countries to participate in its sanctions agenda. “As the United States targets the financial networks that enemy actors use to perpetrate terror, we trust that your participation here today reflects a readiness to stand with us in full measure,” he said.

“That will require, for example, our European partners to join the United States in taking action against Iran by designating its financiers, unmasking its shell and front companies, shuttering its bank branches, and dismantling its proxies.”

“In short, if you share our fury about Iran’s destabilizing agenda, terrorists seeking to hold the global economy hostage, drug cartels poisoning our communities, and threats to innocent lives, then now is the time to join the United States in moving aggressively,” he said.