United States President Donald Trump has announced the \u201cmost crushing economic operation\u201d against Iran, as talks aimed at ending the more than five-month war between the two countries remain deadlocked.<\/p>\n
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said Iran has \u201cfailed to take\u201d the opportunity to make a deal, and will be finished with \u201ceconomic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale\u201d.<\/p>\n
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He also threatened sanctions against any country that does business with Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies \u2014 it all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time that Trump has threatened Iran with economic sanctions.<\/p>\n
His administration has waged a pressure campaign against Iran since April under the banner of Operation Economic Fury, designed to isolate Tehran and block its revenue streams.<\/p>\n
The US has already imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran\u2019s oil, shipping and financial sectors, seeking to cut off the revenue Tehran earns from energy exports. It has also imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and targeted companies, brokers and tankers accused of helping Iran sell its oil abroad.<\/p>\n
\u2018Frustration\u2019<\/p>\n
There was no immediate response from Iranian officials, but Iranian media dismissed Trump\u2019s announcement as nothing new.<\/p>\n
The IRIB state broadcaster said it followed \u201cthe failure of military aggression\u201d while the\u00a0semi-official Tasnim news agency said the announcement was \u201cnot a new development, as the United States has been trying for years to block any financial and economic ties with Iran\u201d. Iran, however, had \u201clearned how to circumvent these restrictions and has become very skilled at doing so\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n
The semi-official Fars news agency also dismissed Trump\u2019s claims as \u201cdelusional\u201d, saying that the US had repeatedly voiced assertions of Iran\u2019s \u201cimminent collapse\u201d and military destruction without delivering concrete results.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump\u2019s latest move showed \u201ca degree of frustration\u201d over the deadlock in the conflict, which began in February.<\/p>\n
He said the first question is what economic pressures could Trump exert on Iran that are already not being exerted and said it may look like \u201canother shouting threat\u201d to the Iranian officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut perhaps his target audience is an American public that continues to oppose this ongoing conflict,\u201d Hanna said. \u201cHe is now taking what he hopes will be seen in the public forum as a very strong stance, regardless of the fact that we do not have specific details on which to judge the possible efficacy of this particular move to strengthen economic action against Iran.<\/p>\n
The China challenge<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s announcement came hours after the United Arab Emirates, a critical trade partner for Iran, suspended all financial ties with the country, accusing it of launching two ballistic missiles toward its waters.<\/p>\n
Tehran denied the claim, calling it a \u201cfalse-flag operation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Analysts said other Iran\u2019s trade partners that Trump could target include China, as well as Iraq and Turkiye.<\/p>\n
In China, \u201che can target the financial institutions that provide services to independent teapot refineries\u201d that are \u201care the last group still purchasing Iranian oil,\u201d said Nader Habibi, a Middle East economics professor at Brandeis University.<\/p>\n
But, \u201cthe challenge is that the Chinese government has warned Chinese entities not to cooperate with US sanctions,\u201d he noted. \u201cGiven that trade negotiations are under way between the United States and China, it will be interesting to see how China reacts if, in the next few days, the United States announces specific targets or institutions that cooperate with those teapot refineries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Habibi added that it would also be difficult for the US to fully enforce restrictions on Iran\u2019s overland trade with Turkiye, Iraq and central Asia.<\/p>\n
Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisor, said the fact that the measures currently threatened by Trump had not already been used showed the risks involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they offered a risk-reward profile that was favourable for the Trump administration, they would have already been implemented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Erickson said Chinese banks were \u201cfar and away the most consequential lever that Trump could pull\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn their own, I am skeptical that they would be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but combined with real enforcement of the UAE\u2019s claim to cutting off business with Iran yesterday, that combination could become truly potent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest constraint to all of this remains time. Economic warfare on Iran not only needs to produce results, they need to produce said results in an expeditious manner,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States President Donald Trump has announced the \u201cmost crushing economic operation\u201d against Iran, as talks aimed at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,801,129,3,21,19,22,20,25,1209,231941,24],"class_list":["post-819446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819446","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=819446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}