Bessent Promises Unprecedented Iran Sanctions Next Week, Won't Say What They Are

Since the June truce that paused the February 28 airstrikes and Iran's retaliatory missile barrages, the war has settled into exactly what Trump officials keep calling a stalemate. Now, with the naval blockade of Iranian ports running roughly six months, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the next move is coming.

"Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country," Bessent told Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Thursday night. He called it a "one-two punch": new financial measures paired with the ongoing blockade that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Navy can sustain "indefinitely" by rotating carriers.

Bessent gave no details. Not one number, not one target, not one mechanism.

The sanctions math already looks maxed out

Jeremy Paner, a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed who tracks Iran's oil and petrochemical sector designations, says the U.S. has already layered roughly 2,200 sanctions actions on Tehran since 2018. Bloomberg Economics analyst Jennifer Welch put the problem bluntly: "If 47 years of sanctions haven't broken Tehran's will, more of the same is unlikely to produce any changes." Her team's base case is that Trump sticks with the current combination of sanctions, blockade and limited strikes rather than escalating militarily.

Bessent is promising something never seen before, but the toolbox for squeezing Iran without hitting third countries is close to empty. The next real lever is secondary sanctions on Iran's oil buyers, chiefly China. Trump has already threatened 25% tariffs on any country buying Iranian goods or services, a threat that, if enforced against Beijing, risks a retaliatory trade fight on top of an unresolved shooting war.

Trump's own numbers, unverified

Trump has been talking up Iran's economic collapse for weeks. Speaking to Real America's Voice this week, he said of Iran: "They've got 300% inflation. Their currency has almost no value. They're not paying their soldiers. Their soldiers are leaving." He's also claimed the U.S. controls a large chunk of Iranian assets: "We control their money, what they had, which is a lot... I'm their banker."

Those figures are Trump's own claims, not independently verified in these sources, and Trump has a track record other outlets have flagged of making tough claims about Iran that don't always translate into follow-through. IBTimes noted that Trump and senior officials have repeatedly issued strident threats against Tehran as leverage without always acting on them. But the broader picture, industrial capacity damaged by strikes and crude exports curtailed by the blockade, is consistent across CNBC, Bloomberg (via Yahoo Finance) and the Irish Times reporting.

Tehran is shopping for a workaround

Iran isn't just absorbing the pressure. Central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said Thursday, speaking from India ahead of next month's BRICS summit, that Iran will soon join the BRICS New Development Bank, telling Tasnim News Agency that Tehran is "seeking to establish bilateral and trilateral monetary cooperation with member states."

Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said over the weekend that a deal with Oman to open an alternate shipping route was "very close," though no agreement has been announced and he offered no details. Mohsen Rezaee, the newly appointed secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said any agreement with Oman would remain separate from a full reopening of the strait.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters there's been "absolutely no progress" on getting the U.S. back into an interim agreement with a defined implementation timeline.

Markets aren't pricing panic

Despite six months of blockade and a fifth of the world's oil and gas supply theoretically choked off, Brent crude sat near $87.95 a barrel and WTI near $82.15, per CNBC. The S&P 500 closed at a record 7,798.99 Thursday. The IEA is projecting global oil demand will fall by 1.6 million barrels a day, an increase of 510,000 barrels from its July forecast, but that's a demand-side revision, not evidence of a supply shock rattling markets.

Vice President JD Vance said Friday that keeping U.S. gas prices low is "goal number one" in the war, with preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon as "goal number two." That ordering, gas prices ahead of nonproliferation, is itself a notable admission about what's driving strategy heading into November's midterms.

The open question is simple: what exactly does an economic isolation plan look like that's tougher than a six-month naval blockade and 2,200 existing sanctions designations, and does it survive contact with China's role as Iran's largest trading partner? Bessent says to watch next week. Nobody outside the administration knows yet what that means in practice.