Iran is on track to have no oil at sea and no oil revenue this week for the “first time in history,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, as a senior Iranian security official delivered a rare warning about the country’s worsening economic crisis.
“For the first time in history, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week,” Bessent told The Axios Show on Saturday. “They will have no revenues.”
Bessent attributed the development to a deliberate three-phase campaign. He said it began with a U.S. military assault earlier this year, continued with President Donald Trump’s blockade of Iranian commerce and has now shifted toward isolating Tehran from the global economy.
The Treasury secretary said the strategy began with an approximately six-week military campaign that started in late February. According to Bessent, the operation destroyed Iran’s navy and air force, significantly reduced its missile and drone capabilities and undermined its ability to rebuild those systems.
“We had kinetic,” Bessent said. “We destroyed their navy, their air force, substantially depleted their drone and missile capability, destroyed their chances of rebuilding that.”
The United States then turned to what Trump has called the “Iron Wall” — a naval blockade designed to stop Iranian oil exports while safeguarding international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That was followed by Operation Economic Outcast, a wider administration effort to cut Tehran off from its remaining trade and revenue channels.
“Then we went to what the president calls the Iron Wall and the blockade, which we’d never done before,” Bessent said. “And now we have Operation Economic Outcast, and we are isolating them economically like has never happened before.”
The Treasury Department broadened the pressure campaign Thursday by imposing sanctions on Iran’s automotive and rail sectors, as well as foreign suppliers. The measures are intended to limit resources available to Tehran’s military, missile and drone programs, cyber operations and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Bessent said the policy has effectively kept Iranian oil from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, even as U.S.-protected international shipping continues to move through the key waterway.
“Right now, the score, in terms of barrels out of the strait: U.S. about 1.1 billion, Iran zero,” he said.
The expected disappearance of Iranian oil shipments at sea this week would fulfill a forecast Bessent made the previous weekend. At that point, about 15 million barrels loaded before the blockade were still aboard tankers, with most of the cargoes bound for China. Bessent said that after those shipments arrived, Tehran would have “nothing left to trade.”
A week later, he says that moment is now approaching.
The impact is increasingly evident inside Iran, where the country’s leadership has issued unusually blunt warnings about the situation.
Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s top national security official, described the crisis as one of the most difficult periods the country has experienced during a senior government meeting Saturday with President Masoud Pezeshkian and other ministers, state-run IRNA reported. Iranian state media did not release Rezaei’s comments in full.
Pezeshkian also acknowledged that economic conditions had deteriorated. During the meeting, he said his government had adopted a “new posture” to address what he termed the country’s “special conditions.”
The warnings came as Iran’s currency fell to another record low. The rial traded at approximately 2.69 million to the dollar Saturday, having lost more than half its value in the past year. Inflation has risen above 70 percent, prompting Iran’s central bank to make as much as $2 billion in U.S. currency available through state banks in an effort to stabilize the rial.
The crisis is also reshaping daily life. Reuters reported that Iranians are depleting savings, losing jobs, relocating to cheaper neighborhoods and reducing spending on essential goods as soaring prices and shrinking oil revenue damage living standards. Fear of government repression, combined with the immediate struggle to afford necessities, has so far prevented economic anger from developing into larger nationwide protests.
Iran’s collapsing oil exports are increasingly at odds with a recovery in shipments from other Gulf producers.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that oil supplies moving through the Strait of Hormuz have continued to increase in recent weeks. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimated that Persian Gulf exports reached about 23.3 million barrels per day over the past week, returning to prewar levels even as Iranian crude loadings plunged.
The administration says it plans to preserve that arrangement: international energy shipments will continue to pass through the strait, while Iranian oil exports remain blocked.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Saturday that Washington can maintain the blockade for as long as necessary and rejected Tehran’s repeated assertions that it controls the strategic waterway.
KEEP READING: Country Music Star’s Wife Faces New Accusations
“Iran wants to play games with things like the Strait of Hormuz. They don’t control it. We do,” Hegseth said. “They have literally gotten nothing through. Our blockade’s been ironclad, and we’re running almost at prewar levels every single night through that.”
Hegseth said the result has left Washington in a “very strong position,” urging Tehran to “make the right choice” while Trump still has the option of resolving the confrontation without another major military escalation.
“If they don’t, the president’s going to have all the options he needs on the table,” he said.
Tehran is now seeking relief from that pressure as Washington and Iran exchange proposals over a possible agreement.
Iranian officials said Sunday that Washington had responded through intermediaries to Tehran’s latest proposal, which Trump had already rejected as insufficient, and that the U.S. response was now being reviewed by the Iranian government. Tehran has continued to demand sanctions relief and an end to restrictions on its maritime commerce as conditions for fully reopening Hormuz.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf insisted Sunday that the strait would remain closed until Washington accepted seven Iranian conditions tied to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding — the June framework that established a ceasefire and a path toward reopening Hormuz and broader negotiations before Iran resumed attacks on commercial vessels and the agreement ultimately broke down.
“The Strait of Hormuz will not open until our seven conditions based on the Islamabad Memorandum are met,” Ghalibaf said.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, insisted that neither additional sanctions nor renewed military action would force Tehran to accept Washington’s terms.
“There is no military solution, nor any solution based on new sanctions,” Araghchi said, arguing that negotiations based on “justice and fairness” offered the only path to ending the conflict.
But Araghchi paired that appeal for negotiations with a warning, saying that if Iran’s enemies “again choose the path of military confrontation, our response will be stronger than before.”
Washington, however, is preparing for the possibility that Tehran still refuses to accept terms Trump considers sufficient.
Senior Trump administration officials met for several hours at Camp David on Friday to discuss Iran, with Vice President JD Vance chairing a previously unannounced gathering that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House envoy Steve Witkoff, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine.
“Things were decided or at least deeply discussed,” one U.S. official told Axios.
Trump offered little detail when reporters subsequently asked what had emerged from the meeting.
“If I told you, you would have a major story,” he said Friday. “But you will see. It is working out very well. Iran is not doing well.”
A day later, Trump said he was approaching a decision.
“We have a decision that I’ll make about Iran,” he said Saturday. “Iran has been decimated. So the only question is it’ll either be the easy way or the hard way. We’ll have it the easy way or the hard way.”
Tehran, meanwhile, is preparing for the possibility that the confrontation again turns military.
Iran’s army announced Sunday that it has begun increasing the range and speed of its missiles after concluding from the conflict that U.S. forces are operating farther from Iranian shores. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia said the military intends to upgrade its missiles to reach adversaries operating at distances of up to 1,000 kilometers.
The announcement comes as Tehran seeks relief from a blockade Bessent says is days away from leaving Iran without oil at sea or the revenues those shipments provide. The Trump administration says it can maintain the blockade for as long as necessary if Iran refuses to accept an agreement.
Hegseth said the United States can maintain the blockade “as long as we need to,” urging Iran to “make the right choice” while it still can. If Tehran refuses, he said, Trump will have “all the options he needs on the table,” with U.S. forces prepared to act if called upon.
