President Trump is preparing to squeeze Iran in a way that could force every government, bank, shipper, and company still doing business with Tehran to make a choice.

The president is calling it an “Economic D-Day.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the details are coming Monday, and his warning to Iran’s remaining economic partners could not be much clearer.

The plan reaches far beyond another narrow list of Iranian officials who cannot open an American bank account. The administration is putting the outside world on notice that economic ties to Tehran may now carry a price imposed by the United States.

The Associated Press reported that Bessent used a Thursday CNBC interview to preview secondary sanctions against nations and companies that continue conducting business with Iran. Bessent did not name the targets Thursday.

China and India remain major buyers of Iranian oil, which puts the coming announcement in an entirely different category from symbolic sanctions on a few regime insiders.

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Bessent said the administration is organizing what he described as the greatest coordinated economic isolation campaign in history. He also indicated that maximum economic pressure could reduce the need for another large round of military action, while making clear that the final decision remains with the president.

The secretary plans to lay out the specific measures at a Monday press conference. That timetable matters because it gives Iran’s trading partners only days to decide how much access to Tehran is worth when weighed against access to the American financial system and market.

The administration is not starting from zero. In May, the U.S. Treasury Department described Operation Economic Fury as a modernized campaign aimed at Iran’s oil revenue, shadow banks, sanctions-evasion networks, and terrorist financing channels.

Treasury said its pressure had disrupted tens of billions of dollars in projected oil revenue, frozen nearly half a billion dollars in regime-linked cryptocurrency, and interfered with hundreds of billions in illicit financial flows. The department also said it was targeting the vessels, intermediaries, buyers, and financial facilitators that allow Iran to convert sanctioned commerce into money for the regime.

That is the machinery behind Monday’s threat. The new phase appears designed to stop treating Iran’s foreign business partners as bystanders and start treating them as part of the network that keeps the regime alive.

Treasury’s July enforcement action shows how granular that campaign can become. The department targeted four people and nine entities connected to Babak Zanjani, accusing the network of using financial services, gold and precious-gem businesses, digital-asset exchanges, transportation companies, and infrastructure projects to obscure ownership and move money for sanctioned Iranian interests.

The department said Zanjani’s businesses operated through both visible commercial ventures and covert financial platforms. The money often moves through layers of companies, managers, exchanges, vessels, and offshore arrangements instead of one obvious Iranian government label.

Treasury specifically identified the digital-asset exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion as parts of the wider operation and also named managers tied to those platforms. Breaking the network requires pressure on the companies and people who actually move the money alongside the Iranian officials who ultimately benefit from it.

A separate Treasury shipping-network action targeted more than 50 people, entities, and vessels tied to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani’s network. Treasury said the operation supported Iranian oil exports through a sprawling structure of shipping and commodities businesses, giving the regime another route around pressure aimed directly at Tehran.

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Those two actions offer a preview of what “economic isolation” can mean in practice. It takes more than one switch in Washington.

It is a sustained effort to identify the people who finance the trade, the ships that carry it, the companies that disguise it, and the countries willing to look the other way.

President Trump has also made clear why he believes the pressure cannot let up.

President Trump’s position is that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The question now is whether the threat of secondary sanctions can make Tehran’s remaining partners decide that preserving their relationship with the United States matters more than preserving their relationship with the Iranian regime.

Monday should reveal how wide the net will be. If the administration follows through on Bessent’s language, the pressure will not stop at Iran’s border.

It will reach anyone still helping Tehran move oil, money, ships, or goods while expecting America to absorb the consequences.

 

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