The Trump administration’s economic pressure on Iran is working, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday. “Last Wednesday was the eight-week anniversary of Operation Economic Outcast, and it has been very successful,” Bessent said. “This is the toughest operation ever to isolate a single economy in the history of the world.”
The regime’s money is in free fall. Iran’s currency has “collapsed so much that you can be arrested for printing the level of the currency,” Bessent said. “We have internal estimates that show that the economy from March to March… may contract by as much as 25%.” For perspective, he noted, the Russian economy contracted 22% in the three years after the Iron Curtain came down.
The pressure is reaching every pillar of the regime. “In the summer, the elected officials started worrying out loud about the economy,” Bessent said. “Now, publicly and privately, the IRGC is very concerned. They’re talking about a collapse.” Many IRGC members, he said, are “like rats in a sewer pipe. They are afraid for their lives,” and they are “bunkered down.” Meanwhile, “the Ayatollah is isolated.”
“The rubber is meeting the road,” Bessent said. “They’re not able to pay their troops. Importantly, they’re not able to get dollars.” And Iran’s terror network is feeling it: “Their proxies, whether it’s the Houthis, Hamas, or Hezbollah, their funding is being cut off.”
Under President Trump, America is squeezing the world’s top state sponsor of terror harder than any nation has ever been squeezed, and the regime is running out of road.
