We are squeezing the Iranians like they have never seen,” United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared while the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly was under way in New York. Claiming that 80 to 90 percent of Iran’s external flights had been shut down, he said he was unsure how the Iranian representatives attending the United Nations would get home.
His remarks came one day after President Donald Trump used the General Assembly podium to threaten that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no agreement were reached, while calling upon other nations to join the United States in economically isolating Iran while calling upon other nations to join the United States in economically isolating Iran. Placed alongside Operation Economic Outcast—the whole-of-government campaign announced by the Treasury Department on August 24, 2026—these declarations reveal the intended scale of the pressure: not merely sanctions against selected officials, but the economic, financial and physical isolation of a country whose ordinary people will inevitably bear the consequences.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is a former Press Secretary to the President, An ex-Press Minister at Embassy of Pakistan to France, a former MD, SRBC Macomb, Detroit, Michigan
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