Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday to announce sanctions against Iran in what he calls the “largest coordinated economic isolation campaign in the history of the world.”
“We’re going to impose the toughest sanctions in history, but I’m telling you this is going to work,” Bessent said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Streets.” “After we put in place a blockade, it worked in Venezuela, it’s working in Cuba now, it’s going to work in Iran, and we’re going to bring this system down.”
Bessent’s news conference came after US President Donald Trump said last week that the US would target Iran with “the most devastating economic operation ever waged against any country.”
President Trump also threatened to impose harsh economic sanctions on countries that help Iran evade sanctions, adding in a post on Truth Social: “This will be economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dismissed the threat, according to state media. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that Iran has ways to “counter the negative effects of enemy wars” and “can easily establish economic relations with countries.”
“The President of the United States has ordered an economic war and said he has launched the harshest economic operation against Iran. This amounts to a tacit admission of the enemy’s humiliating defeat in the military field,” a Revolutionary Guards spokesperson said, according to state media.
Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that the United States will call on its allies and the rest of the world to stop doing business with Iran. He said the United States would “do everything in our power” against those who do not comply.
“We’re going to go to them and say you’re either with us or you’re against us,” Bessent said. “The time has come for our allies and the rest of the world to make a decision: We are going to crush this murderous regime’s economy, thereby curbing its ability to project power through its proxies.”
WATCH: Watch the full interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC.
