The United States has claimed it seized close to $500 million worth of Iranian cryptocurrency assets as part of its ongoing economic pressure campaign against Tehran.<\/p>\n
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington had already taken control of about $350 million in crypto holdings, along with another $100 million recently, bringing the total close to half a billion dollars. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to grab about 350 million crypto assets, and then on top of another 100 that we had recently gotten, so we\u2019re almost at half a billion there, and we are freezing bank accounts everywhere,\u201d he told Fox News.<\/p>\n
Bessent said the campaign, dubbed \u201cOperation Economic Fury,\u201d was launched under the direction of US President Donald Trump in March last year, with instructions to intensify pressure further in recent weeks. As part of the effort, the US is also urging foreign governments and companies to cut economic ties with Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have gone to the buyers of Iranian oil and told them that \u2026 we are willing to do secondary sanctions on your industries, on your banks who tolerate Iranian oil in their system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to Bessent, the combined impact of economic sanctions and the US naval blockade on Iranian ports is expected to cause long-term damage to Iran\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
Iran, however, has dismissed the claims and criticised the US strategy. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf mocked Bessent\u2019s remarks, calling his advice to Trump \u201cjunk\u201d in a post on X, while officials in Tehran argue that such measures could instead drive global oil prices higher.<\/p>\n
“3 days in, no well exploded.We could extend to 30 and livestream the well here. That was the kind of junk advice the US admin gets from people like Bessent who also push the blockade theory and cranked oil up to $120+. Next stop:140. The issue isn’t the theory, it’s the mindset,” Ghalibaf added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States has claimed it seized close to $500 million worth of Iranian cryptocurrency assets as part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,227351,228242,267634,3,21,19,22,20,25,227350,267635,24,1139,236985,267632,267633],"class_list":["post-616751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-iran-israel-war","tag-iran-war","tag-middle-east-crisis","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-iran-war","tag-us-war","tag-usa","tag-war","tag-war-news","tag-war-news-today","tag-war-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616751","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=616751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}