Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave an update on “Operation Economic Fury” to “suffocate” Iran during an appearance with FNC’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Yes. And, Maria, just to remind you and — you and your viewers, this began with the order last March from President Trump on max pressure. And three weeks ago, the president gave the order to Treasury, myself, to begin Economic Fury.
And the way to think about that, we were running a marathon over the past 12 months, and now we are sprinting towards the finish line. And I can tell you that we are suffocating the regime, and they are not able to pay their soldiers.
This is a real economic blockade, and it is in all parts of government, all hands on deck. It is the blockade that our great Navy is doing. No ships are getting through, and we have upped the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC.
They are a corrupt institution. They have been stealing from the Iranian people for years. They have money offshore. We have tracked that down. We will continue to track that down, and we’re going to preserve those assets for the Iranian people on the other side of this conflict.
BARTIROMO: And I guess it wasn’t very smart of Iran to lash out at its Gulf friends. That, combined with the pressure from OPEC, has the United Arab Emirates leaving OPEC. What’s the impact there?
BESSENT: Well, twofold, Maria.
As you said, they really miscalculated when they started bombing their Gulf neighbors in a kinetic fashion. And, in response, the Gulf neighbors, who I would describe as somewhat permissive, in allowing Iranian IRGC money, Iranian regime money into their banking systems, have been very fulsome and come forward and given us the details and allowed us to freeze those assets.
So the IRGC is watching their stolen assets for years, decades, for 47 years get frozen and go down the drain very quickly. The UAE has decided that OPEC is not for them. Most monopolies eventually collapse under their own weight.
And, Maria, we can talk about it now or in a minute, but this gives me a lot of optimism that oil prices on the other side of this conflict are going to be much lower than they were going in or at the beginning of the year or at any point in 2025.
BARTIROMO: Yes, so in other words, more oil on the market, it’s simple supply and demand. You’re thinking that this is going to help the case on oil prices.
You have got the UAE no longer needing to follow quotas from OPEC. They will put more oil on the market, and that adds to the oil on the market to send prices. You think oil prices will be lower before the midterm elections?
BESSENT: I think oil prices — we can see in the futures market that oil prices are already lower three months, six months, nine months out.
But, again, Maria, there are hundreds of oil tankers waiting in the Gulf to come out. The U.S. is only blockading Iranian ships. And we will see. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see more of those ships coming out.
The Iranians, it reminds me, they’re kind of like the Keystone Cops here. Reminds me of Baghdad Bob during the Iraqi war, had the guy kind of spouting nonsense while the tanks were driving around behind him. And the Iranians are like this. They’re not tolling the strait.
We think that they have gotten less than 1.3 million in tolls, which is a pittance on their previous daily oil revenues. And their oil infrastructure is starting to creak. It hasn’t been maintained, again, because of our decades-long sanctions against them.
They are rapidly filling up, filling up storage. And, as that happens, they’re going to have to start shutting in wells, which we think could be in the next week.
