US Moves to Crush Iran’s Economy as Bessent Seeks China Cooperation

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent didn’t just threaten Iran Thursday — he told the rest of the world, allies and rivals alike, to pick a side, framing Washington’s next sanctions wave as leverage over practically every country still buying Iranian oil.

“It is a one-two punch. We have the blockade on Iran, and we are going to have the toughest sanctions in history,” Bessent told CNBC, adding “it is going to work in Iran, and we are going to collapse this regime.” He said the goal is “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world,” telling allies bluntly: “you are either with us or against us.” Bessent said full details would come at a press conference Monday, following Trump’s Wednesday warning that any country providing Iran “any type of lifeline” would face “tremendous economic consequences.”

China took center stage in Bessent’s remarks, and for a specific reason the numbers make clear: Beijing buys more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler, making it the load-bearing customer for the trade Washington is trying to shut down. Asked whether the US would target China directly, Bessent said “many conversations are best to have in private,” but added a pointed nudge: “the Chinese get 50% of their energy from inside the Gulf. So it would do them a big service to get with the program.” China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

That restraint — public prodding rather than an explicit threat — reflects timing as much as diplomacy. Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the White House on September 24, a meeting where Iran is expected to come up directly, as it reportedly did when Trump traveled to Beijing in May. Pressuring China too aggressively now risks retaliation Washington may not want ahead of that visit, particularly given China’s position as a major US trading partner and the sole significant global supplier of certain rare-earth minerals American manufacturers depend on.

Bessent tied the sanctions push to a broader strategic bet: that maximum economic pressure reduces, rather than raises, the odds of renewed fighting. “If we are doing the maximum economic pressure, then that means that likely there will not be a large-scale kinetic restart,” he said — an explicit argument that sanctions are substituting for military action, not preceding it, at least for now. He also pushed back on how markets read his own announcement, after oil prices climbed to three-week highs Thursday: “I think oil markets are misinterpreting what this economic pressure means. We have asymmetric information, and I’m not sure why oil has popped up on this.”

Iran’s response arrived within hours and rejected the entire framing. Tehran called the new pressure “economic terrorism,” with an official statement describing sanctions and pressure as offering no path to resolving the conflict — language consistent with Foreign Minister Araghchi’s earlier dismissal of “Economic D-Day” as a distraction from America’s own debt troubles.

Whether Beijing treats Monday’s announcement as something to quietly absorb or publicly resist will likely shape how seriously the rest of Iran’s remaining trade partners take Washington’s ultimatum — China’s economic weight makes it the campaign’s real test case, regardless of what specific measures get unveiled.