Tehran, Iran – Iranians are preparing for further economic pain as the United States gets ready to announce a new round of punishing sanctions on Iran. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is expected to announce new economic measures against the country on Monday, designed to “squash” the Iranian economy and “collapse” the government. US President Donald Trump has also warned of an “economic D-Day”, with the US preparing the most potent financial measures against any country, aimed at Iran.
But analysts say the penalties are unlikely to change the behaviour of Iran, already one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. Banks, oil buyers and refiners, shipping companies, registries, ports, airports, exchange houses, front companies and potentially governments facilitating Iranian trade could be exposed to secondary sanctions by Washington. In a social media post on Monday, Trump claimed Iran was “completely collapsing”.
The country has been subject to a “maximum pressure” campaign by the US since Trump’s first term in office in 2018. This followed the US’s unilateral withdrawal from a nuclear deal signed three years earlier between Iran and world powers. This had lifted United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran in return for verified curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran has responded to economic penalties by the US and its allies with a complex sanctions-evasion system. Among these are a shadow tanker fleet, ship-to-ship transfers of oil, shell companies, and alternative payment and barter mechanisms. A naval blockade enforced by the US military on Tehran has physically stopped most Iran-linked ships from transiting through the country’s southern ports.
The US Central Command said on Sunday that its forces have redirected 70 commercial vessels, disabled three, and boarded two as part of the blockade, which it says could last indefinitely. But Iran’s extensive land borders and railway lines, as well as access to the Caspian Sea in the north, gave Tehran more leeway to circumvent this. Umud Shokri, energy strategist and senior visiting fellow at George Mason University, said that Iran has now become quite adept at finding ways around US sanctions.
The Iranian rial continued to fall to a new all-time low on Monday, hitting a rate of 2.03 million rials against the US dollar in Tehran’s open market, as Iranians’ purchasing power weakens. Senior military commanders in Iran remain defiant and have even indicated a more aggressive approach to deter the US from enacting more sanctions. Mohsen Rezaei, the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned countries that if they back the new US economic measures, they will be considered enemies of Tehran.
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