Iranian officials brushed off the U.S. announcement on Monday of more economic sanctions against their country and the threat of even stronger actions to come.
Seyed Ali Madanizadeh, the finance minister, said that Iran was already prepared to deal with American efforts to further isolate it from the world economy.
“The government has a two-year plan for the country’s economic affairs, and all matters have been covered in this plan,” he said in an interview on state media after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the additional economic pressure. “Sanctions are not new” to Iran, Mr. Madanizadeh added.
Iran’s influential Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that Washington’s new economic campaign would only punish the Iranian people.
“By waging economic warfare and imposing multilayered sanctions, the enemy seeks to sow despair, put pressure on people’s livelihoods and undermine social trust,” the Guards Corp said in a statement on Iranian state media shortly after Mr. Bessent’s announcement.
Mr. Bessent said that more than “60 entities, individuals, and vessels across the world that enable the Iranian regime to procure illicit nuclear and missile technology, conduct cyber operations, and generate oil revenue” had been sanctioned and that the United States would soon take additional steps to “collapse every last option for Iran.”
The new sanctions target Mr. Bessent said were “five of Iran‘s most vital lifelines that it exploits in other countries: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.” The campaign “will gather force with every day that follows,” he said.
President Trump had pledged that the war he began alongside Israel in late February would be swift and decisive, but the conflict has dragged on with no clear end in sight. A cease-fire signed in June collapsed weeks later after Iran resumed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical Persian Gulf waterway for oil and gas.
Now, Mr. Trump has threatened Iran with “economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale.” He has also warned that countries doing business with Iran would face severe penalties. Iran’s largest trading partners include China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The U.A.E. last week said it was halting all trade and financial transactions with Iran. It is unclear if the United States played a role in the Emirates’ decision, but the announcement came hours after a call from President Trump to the Emirati leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.
Analysts say Iran is more likely to lash out militarily in response to heightened American economic pressure than to accept Mr. Trump’s demands that it curb its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Many experts are also skeptical that Mr. Trump will impose serious penalties on China, whose leader, Xi Jinping, is slated to visit Washington next month. Mr. Bessent said that no one was exempt from the economic pressure campaign on Iran but declined to respond to questions about China specifically.
“The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, wrote on social media minutes before Mr. Bessent spoke. Mr. Ghalibaf dismissed the U.S. effort as “bombast.”
Western sanctions have squeezed Iran for years, fueling inflation, unemployment and other economic ills that helped to stoke mass protests against the Iranian government earlier this year. But Iran’s leaders have not bent, and they responded to the unrest with a brutal and bloody crackdown that killed thousands of demonstrators, according to Iranian rights groups operating in exile.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry similarly said on Monday that Tehran would not bow to the escalating pressure. Esmaeil Baghaei, the ministry spokesman, speaking before Mr. Bessent’s announcement, said the Trump administration was merely “repeating methods that have proven unsuccessful.”
“Iran will certainly use all multilateral capacities to counter economic sanctions,” he told reporters at a news conference.
On Sunday night, Mohsen Rezaei, a senior Iranian official, threatened that Iran could respond to economic pressure by retaliating against American allies in the Persian Gulf. If the U.S.-led campaign continued, “not a single drop of oil will be exported” from the region, he wrote on social media.
“Iran will regard any country’s participation in or support for America’s economic war against the Iranian people as an act of war,” said Mr. Rezaei, who leads Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council.
Gulf Arab countries have already borne the brunt of Iranian retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli campaign. Iran has fired drones and missiles at American bases in those countries, and it has effectively blockaded oil and gas exports via the Strait of Hormuz.
