Regular readers of this column know that I have become a big fan of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
For many months I have been saying that Treasury’s efforts, under his direction, to undermine the Iranian regime’s ability to access international financial markets are a critical complement to our overall campaign against Tehran.
For sure, if our military had not totally disabled Iran’s air defenses and taken out huge numbers of missile launchers and production plants, our allies in the Gulf would be in a world of hurt. But if Treasury can pull off its plan to isolate Iran from international financial markets, the regime is likely to collapse.
This week, Bessent got a big assist from the European Union, which formally signed on to Operational Economic Outcast during talks at the G20 summit of finance ministers in Asheville, NC.
Europe has long had sanctions aimed at restricting supplies to Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, but frankly that was mere lip service given that Germany, France, the UK, and Italy are largely responsible for having built the dual-use industrial base in Iran that allowed the regime to grow its military capabilities so dramatically over the past decade.
Bessent was effusive in his praise of the Euros this week. “We appreciate their strong and early stance,” he posted to social media on Thursday. “The world is sending a clear message to the Iranian regime: We will not stop until every remaining financial lifeline has been severed.”
But I would like to see the Euros take real action, starting by closing down all branches of Iran’s national bank — Bank Melli — which Bessent ticked off as an action item when he unveiled Operation Economic Outcast on August 24.
Example: on August 31, Treasury had to blacklist a French cooking-oil refinery, La Nivernaise de Raffinage SA, beneficially owned by Iran, after the French government refused to do so.
The North Carolina confab gave Bessent the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with his G20 counterparts, so he could lay out chapter and verse on the Iranian assets in each of their countries.
Remember: Economic Outcast is sweeping. In addition to all the earlier sanctions against Iranian banks, oil, construction, mining, and manufacturing companies, Treasury is now targeting five additional sectors of the Iranian economy: aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology.
Example: Iran is the world’s fifth-largest gold consumer in the world. In 2022, it cut import tariffs on gold to zero “to facilitate the return of funds held abroad due to U.S. sanctions,” according to a report from the Italian Trade & Investment Agency. It was believed to have imported around 200 million grams (200 tons) of gold between March 2024 to March 2025 (the Iranian year begins on March 21).
Iran’s main gold suppliers have been China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. But that’s just for semi-open gold purchases. Iran also operates a sophisticated oil-for-gold barter system to get around the international banking system where Treasury closely monitors its operations.
Already in April, Treasury exposed and sanctioned an IRGC-Quds Force network that smuggled Iranian oil to the Maduro regime in Venezuela in exchange for gold they shipped back to Iran or sold through intermediaries in Turkey.
Much of the illicit oil was moved through dozens of companies controlled by Iranian shipping magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the son of the now-deceased secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council on National Defense.
Since Shamkhani’s demise, his replacement, Mohsen Rezai, appears to have transferred the oil smuggling networks to his surviving son, Ali Rezai.
The younger Rezai was identified in an Iran International investigation earlier this year as one of nine “trustees” who managed the regime’s illicit oil sales, and who now stand accused of having pocketed $11 billion of the proceeds instead of returning them to the Iranian state treasury.
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“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.” — Sir Walter Scott.
Many Republicans facing tough re-election bids in November are sweating bricks over the continuation of the Iran war.
That may be why Vice President JD Vance told the White House press corps on Thursday that we are no longer “at war” with Iran. I guess we are just mowing the grass, as the Israelis used to say of periodic air strikes against Hamas.
But those Republicans are going to have to grow a spine and explain to their voters why we are in this fight, and why it is absolutely critical to the future of their families and this country.
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They are going to have to learn, and explain, why the Iranian nuclear weapons program is a threat to America, and to applaud President Trump for being the only American leader to take decisive action to destroy it once and for all.
When Iranian regime leaders chant “Death to America,” they are not just exercising their vocal cords. They mean it. And nuclear weapons were the means they had chosen to carry out that threat.
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