US ‘suffocating’ Iran with blockade: Treasury chief

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on May 3 that the United States was “suffocating” Iran’s leadership through an “economic blockade” launched alongside the US military offensive.

“This began with the order last March from President Trump on max pressure, and three weeks ago the President gave the order to Treasury myself to begin Economic Fury,” Mr Bessent said in a Fox News interview, referring to his department’s initiative to supplement the Pentagon’s “Operation Epic Fury.”

“We are suffocating the regime, and they are not able to pay their soldiers. This is a real economic blockade, and it is in all parts of government – all hands on deck,” he told the Sunday Morning Futures programme.

Both Iran and the United States have imposed restrictions on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for the energy industry exporting hydrocarbons from the Gulf.

While Iran has blocked most shipping in the passageway, the US Navy says it is blocking all ships heading to or from Iranian ports. Both sides are said to be negotiating as a fragile ceasefire holds.

Mr Bessent said his department was imposing economic measures “on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC,” Iran’s elite military force.

“They are a corrupt institution. They have been stealing from the Iranian people for years. They have money offshore. We have tracked that down. We will continue to track that down, and we are going to preserve those assets for the Iranian people on the other side of this conflict,” he said.

On May 2, describing the Iranian leadership as “rats in a sewer pipe,” Mr Bessent wrote on X that “the BLOCKADE will continue, until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation,” in the strait.

In the same post he said that “food and gasoline rationing are in place” in Iran.

Meanwhile on CBS’s Face the Nation, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett echoed Mr Bessent on May 3, saying that Iran had “an economy that’s really on the precipice of extreme calamity.”

“They are having a hyperinflation,” he added. “They’re starting to have hunger.” AFP