Iranian Officials Scoff at US Treasury Secretary's Threat of 'Economic D-Day'
Top Iranian officials on Monday ridiculed the Trump administration's threats of total economic warfare against the Middle East country, calling the US Treasury Department's proposed "financial offensive" an act of desperation as the costly conflict drags on with no end in sight."Is this a victory or an admission of America's failure!?" Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out the Trump administration's planned economic assault in a Sunday op-ed for the Financial Times titled, "An Economic D-Day Is Coming for Iran." In a social media post promoting his op-ed, Bessent declared that US President Donald Trump has "dismantled Iran’s military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100% of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program.""We are now entering the endgame," Bessent added. "At dawn begins an economic D-Day—the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."Gharibabadi responded that Bessent's "narrative doesn't add up.""You say Iran's military capability has been 'dismantled,' 100% of its military factories 'destroyed,' and its nuclear program 'buried'; but for this very Iran, the 'largest financial assault in history' and the mobilization of 'all US institutions and authorities' have been necessary!" Gharibabadi wrote.Iran's top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, similarly dismissed the Trump administration's vow to intensify its economic warfare against Iran, saying it is "bound to fail.""We have seen this movie before," said Araghchi. "Same bull. Different bullies."Bessent is expected to unveil the details of the economic measures in a press conference on Monday, initiating a new phase of a war that the US and Israel launched in late February.Analysts said the renewed threats of all-out economic warfare are reminiscent of the "maximum pressure" campaign that the first Trump administration launched against Iran after shredding the Obama-era nuclear accord, setting the stage for the current war."The United States can certainly inflict a significant amount of pain on the Iranians," Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN over the weekend. "But to bring them to some sort of a breaking point that would cause them to surrender, I find extremely unlikely. I think we should remind ourselves: We've been here before. This is what the maximum pressure sanctions were supposed to do eight years ago.""If this ends up becoming successful in terms of putting a lot of pressure on the Iranians," Parsi added, "then the most likely outcome is that they will counter-escalate, and their counter-escalation could be striking countries in the region."Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry, warned during a press conference on Monday that "any collusion with the United States in this plan will certainly have consequences."