US Treasury Sec Bessent warns entities aiding Iran money laundering

"The clock just started ticking": US Treasury Secy Bessent warns "any entity" aiding Iran's "money laundering"

Washington DC, August 25

While addressing a press conference, Bessent said, "Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US Dollar system. The clock just started ticking."

Bessent said US President Donald Trump was contacting world leaders and urging them to end interactions with the Iranian regime, adding that Washington was already seeing results.

"The President is making phone calls to world leaders with a specific request to cease their interactions with the regime; we are already seeing the results. Nations that facilitate any interactions with the regime should quickly heed our message. Those who stand with the United States will reap the rewards of our partnership; those who tether themselves to the Iranian regime should expect to share in the isolation of a withering regime," he added.

Bessent said the latest sectoral sanctions target five areas that Iran relies on in other countries.

"The new sectoral sanctions determinations issued today target five of Iran's most vital lifelines that it exploits in other countries: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping," he said.

He said the measures were part of a broader campaign aimed at restricting Iran's economic options.

"This is a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran. Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States: an economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power," Bessent said.

Earlier on Sunday (local time), Bessent said that the Trump administration is entering the "endgame" in its campaign against Iran, announcing what he called an "economic D-Day" aimed at severing Iran's economic lifelines.

In a post on X, Bessent said, "President Trump has dismantled Iran's military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program."

"We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day -- the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary," he said.

Bessent accused Iran of using security guarantees as a form of "extortion" and said Tehran had relied on the expectation that Iranian retaliation was certain while US enforcement could be negotiated.

"The Islamic Republic has subsisted by dressing extortion as security guarantees. It has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable," Bessent said.

"Under President Trump, that era is over. And those who fear the danger of defying Tehran ought not to discount the cost of testing Washington," he added.

Bessent said Trump had created the conditions for the US government to deploy its full range of authorities against Iran.

"The President has created the conditions to leverage every agency, every authority and action many assumed we would never summon," he said.

"Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains the tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone," Bessent added.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei warned that Tehran could halt all oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf if the United States' "economic war" against Iran continues.

— ANI