US to sanction another bank to keep economic pressure on Iran

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week as it intensifies efforts to economically isolate Iran, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday.

“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent told the Associated Press in an interview. “We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop.”

The announcement comes just days after Washington said it would cut off the UAE operations of Banque Misr from the US financial system after accusing Egypt’s second-biggest bank of doing business with the Iranian government.

Bessent spoke ahead of Group of 20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, where he will meet individually with his counterparts from the world’s major and developing economies to encourage cooperation against Iran.

The Trump administration recently signaled that it would shift from military strikes to economic pressure during a war that recently reached the six-month mark, promising what it called an “economic D-Day” against a country that has already weathered decades of punishing sanctions.

However, hostilities between the US and Iran flared on Sunday. US forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz in their first military action in a month, breaking a lull in fighting. Iran vowed to retaliate for what it called a deadly attack.

In addition, the administration has mostly relied on warnings rather than new sanctions against Iran’s trading partners. There’s also the question of how Trump will handle China, which is Iran’s biggest trading partner and leading buyer of its oil.

Bessent told the AP he would speak to his Chinese counterparts at the G20 meeting and “all options are on the table” in terms of sanctioning Beijing for its continued purchases.

But he rejected the idea that the administration was reluctant to confront China, calling it “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on.” He insisted that China and the US agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

⁠In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Bessent said the next step may be cutting off an institution entirely from the dollar-based financial system.

“You’re going ⁠to see a lot ⁠more of these every week,” he said on Sunday. “We’re starting with the banks, and we’re telling ⁠the banks it’s not OK ⁠to have Iranian money and to aid the regime.”

Treasury’s first official action in this campaign of economic pressure was a proposed rulemaking on Friday, which would, if finalized, sever the UAE branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from access to the US financial system.

In stopping short of imposing sanctions on the Egyptian bank, the Republican administration appeared to be signaling its reluctance to penalize major trading partners that do business with Iran, including China and India.