WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that he will “asphyxiate” the Iranian government until it agrees to a peace deal with President Trump — saying he’s working to seize offshore bank accounts and luxury properties owned by Tehran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
During a discussion moderated by economist and Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow ahead of meetings with G20 finance ministers in Asheville, NC, Bessent specified he plans to target bank assets in the British Virgin Islands and “$100 million houses” — likely a reference to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s purported $130 million London real estate portfolio.
“We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime,” said Bessent, adding: “My job is to make sure that they want to have a deal, and they will want to have one.”
The Treasury Department last week announced “Operation Economic Outcast” in a bid to isolate the Islamic Republic in tandem with a US Navy blockade reimposed by Trump 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.”
Bessent likened the Iranian government to a poisonous snake whose head has been chopped off, but whose body is still wriggling due to involuntary muscle contractions.
“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.
