U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks during a press conference to outline further sanctions against Iran, at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., Aug. 24, 2026. <\/p>\n
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters<\/p>\n
President\u00a0Donald\u00a0Trump’s<\/a>\u00a0administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week as it intensified efforts to economically isolate\u00a0Iran,\u00a0U.S. Treasury Secretary\u00a0Scott Bessent\u00a0told The Associated Press on Sunday.<\/p>\n “This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent said in the interview. “We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop.”<\/p>\n Bessent spoke with the AP ahead of Group of 20 meetings in\u00a0Asheville, North Carolina, where he will meet individually with his counterparts from the world’s major and developing economies to encourage cooperation against\u00a0Iran.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Trump\u00a0administration recently signaled that it would shift\u00a0from military strikes to economic pressure\u00a0during a war that recently reached the six-month mark, promising what it called an “economic D-Day” against a country that\u00a0has already weathered decades of punishing sanctions.<\/p>\n However, hostilities between the\u00a0U.S. and\u00a0Iran\u00a0flared on Sunday.\u00a0U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers\u00a0on the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz\u00a0in their first military action in a month, breaking a lull in fighting.\u00a0Iran\u00a0vowed to retaliate for what it called a deadly attack.<\/p>\n In addition, the administration has mostly relied on warnings rather than new sanctions against\u00a0Iran’s\u00a0trading partners. There’s also the question of\u00a0how\u00a0Trump\u00a0will handle\u00a0China, which is\u00a0Iran’s\u00a0biggest trading partner and leading buyer of its oil.<\/p>\n Bessent told the AP he would speak to his Chinese counterparts at the\u00a0G20\u00a0meeting and “all options are on the table” in terms of sanctioning\u00a0Beijing\u00a0for its continued purchases.<\/p>\n But he rejected the idea that the administration was reluctant to confront\u00a0China, calling it “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on.” He insisted that\u00a0China\u00a0and the\u00a0U.S. agree on the need to reopen the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz\u00a0and prevent\u00a0Iran\u00a0from developing a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n Treasury’s first official action in this campaign of economic pressure was a proposed rulemaking<\/a> on Friday, which would, if finalized, sever the\u00a0Emirati\u00a0branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from access to the\u00a0U.S. financial system.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0Iran, including\u00a0China\u00a0and\u00a0India.<\/p>\n