GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Iran’s economy is facing high inflation and other challenges, partly due to U.S. sanctions, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said \u200bon Thursday, underscoring Washington’s concerns about Tehran cracking down violently on anti-regime protests.<\/p>\n
“The \u200cIranian economy is on the ropes,” Bessent told the Economic Club of Minnesota, underscoring President Donald Trump’s warning to \u200cTehran to avoid harming protesters.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very precarious moment. He does not want them to harm more of the protesters. This is a tense moment,” the U.S. Treasury secretary said, referring to Trump’s threat on Sunday to hit Tehran if it began killing protesters.<\/p>\n
“We’re watching it very \u2060closely. If they start killing \u200cpeople like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters aboard \u200dAir Force One on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Rights groups say at least 25 people were killed in Iran during the first nine days of protests that started in the bazaar of Tehran over the plunging value of \u200bthe currency and soaring inflation, the biggest wave of dissent in three years.<\/p>\n
The protests \u200chave since spread nationwide amid deepening distress over rocketing inflation driven by mismanagement and Western sanctions, and curbs on political and social freedoms.<\/p>\n
Iranian authorities have acknowledged the economic hardships facing Iranians, but accused networks linked to foreign powers of stoking the protests. Iran’s top judge warned protesters on Wednesday there would be “no leniency for those who help the enemy against the \u2060Islamic Republic.”<\/p>\n
Bessent said it was clear that “what had been \u200ban affluent society that still maintained a high standard \u200bof living is really crumbling, and a lot of that is through the sanctions.”<\/p>\n
He said it was unclear how Tehran planned to finance the rebuilding \u200dof its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
Trump’s \u2060threat to come to the aid of protesters if security forces fire on them comes seven months after Israeli and U.S. forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites in a \u206012-day war. Trump often references the U.S. and Israeli attacks as an example of what he sees as \u200chis strong leadership on global affairs.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Lawder in Minneapolis and \u200cAndrea Shalal in Washington; editing by Diane Craft)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Iran’s economy is facing high inflation and other challenges, partly due…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,12,191674,101,693,801,6429,186940,4666,41499],"class_list":["post-396529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-club-of-minnesota","tag-economy","tag-golden-valley","tag-iran","tag-minnesota","tag-protesters","tag-scott-bessent","tag-u-s-treasury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}