When President Donald Trump got tired of trading offers with Iran at the beginning of the year, he decided to ditch talks in pursuit of a full-blown war. When the war produced consequences that were entirely predictable and predicted—Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, becoming more belligerent with its Gulf Arab neighbors and rallying around an even more hard-line leadership—he switched to diplomacy again, hoping the June memorandum of understanding would nip escalation in the bud before it got any worse. And when that agreement fell apart weeks later, Trump changed tack and went back to airstrikes.
Now, seemingly out of options, the Trump administration appears ready to take a full swing. In his first term, Trump relied on maximum-pressure sanctions to compel the Iranians to give up their nuclear aspirations. Years later, that same maximum-pressure strategy is again at the forefront.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unrolled “Operation Economic Outcast,” a new initiative meant to cut off all revenue streams to Tehran and squeeze the regime into submission. The message: Any country that dallies with Iran in any capacity is at risk of being shut out of the U.S. financial system. “We are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations,” Bessent said during the news conference. “We know who they are. They know who they are.”
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