WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday the Trump administration intends to “asphyxiate” Iran’s government financially until Tehran agrees to a peace deal with President Trump, outlining efforts to seize offshore bank accounts and high-end real estate allegedly tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Speaking in a forum moderated by economist and Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow ahead of G20 finance ministers’ meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, Bessent said Treasury officials are focusing on bank assets held in the British Virgin Islands as well as “$100 million houses” around the world — an apparent reference to reports about a purported $130 million London property portfolio linked to Mojtaba Khamenei.
“We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime,” Bessent said, adding that his role is to increase pressure on Iranian leaders until “they want to have a deal, and they will want to have one.”
The remarks came after the Treasury Department last week unveiled “Operation Economic Outcast,” a campaign aimed at further isolating the Islamic Republic alongside a US Navy blockade that Trump reinstated in July.
“We are tracking down the IRGC’s assets, and I will say it on worldwide TV, just so you know: We know where in the British Virgin Islands your accounts are at these trust companies,” Bessent said Tuesday.
“We know the $100 million houses you have around the world. We are going to freeze those. We are going to our partners. We are going to close all that down,” he continued.
Bessent also used a vivid metaphor to describe the Iranian government, comparing it to a venomous snake that continues to thrash after being decapitated because of lingering muscle reflexes.
“When I was a kid in South Carolina, we lived near a swamp, and as a result, we’d end up with a lot of poison snakes in our yard. And you would take either a rake or a machete, or a paddle from a boat, and you cut the head off,” he said.
“But the snake, the tail kept wiggling, and you had to bury the head of the snake because the head of the snake was still poisonous, and there was venom there. So we are burying the head of the Iranian snake. The snake doesn’t know it’s dead yet, but it will stop wiggling when the sun goes down.”
Bessent predicted last week that sanctions would either “collapse this regime” in Iran — or force it back to the negotiating table.
The Trump administration has credited sanctions on Venezuela with weakening that country’s government ahead of the January military operation that toppled strongman Nicolas Maduro.
But in other cases, long-term sanctions failed to dislodge dictators like Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Castro brothers in Cuba.
