Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will hold a press conference Monday to announce sanctions against Iran that he described to CNBC as the greatest campaign of “coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.”
“At dawn begins an economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary,” Bessent said in an opinion piece he authored in The Financial Times on Sunday.
The Teasury Secretary told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. will “collapse” the Islamic Republic with the “toughest sanctions in history.”
The Trump administration demands that U.S. allies and the rest of the world stop doing business with Iran, Bessent said. The U.S. will use its “full might” against anyone who does not comply, he told CNBC.
“We are going to them and saying you are either with us or against us,” Bessent told CNBC. “It is time for our allies and the rest of the world to make a decision, and we are going to squash the economy of this murderous regime.”
Bessent’s press conference comes after U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that the U.S. will target Iran with the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country.”
Trump also threatened severe financial penalties against any nation that helps Iran evade sanctions, adding in a post on Truth Social that “this will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has dismissed the Trump administration’s threats, according to its state media. An IRGC spokesperson said Sunday that Iran has ways “to counter the adverse effects of the enemy’s war” and that it can “easily establish economic relations with countries.”
“The U.S. president says that he ordered an economic war and launched the most severe economic campaign against Iran. This amounts to an implicit admission of the enemy’s humiliating defeat in the military arena,” the IRGC spokesperson said, according to state media.
Iran is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world, said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. It is unclear whether more economic pressure will change Tehran’s behavior, Croft told CNBC in an interview Friday.
Iran seems to believe that it can outlast a Trump administration that wants the war to end quickly, she said. Tehran still has the ability to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz and infrastructure in the Middle East, the analyst said.
“Iran still has significant disruptive capabilities,” Croft said. “The question is how is this going to change with additional economic sanctions.”
WATCH: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
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