Stop Attacking the Iranian People

Threatening to “make Iran broke again” seems likely to encourage stiff resistance to whatever the U.S. demands.

The Treasury Secretary said today that the goal of Trump’s sanctions is to collapse the Iranian economy:

President Donald Trump’s sanctions against Iran are designed to shut down the country’s oil industry and “collapse its already buckling economy,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday.

The U.S. is deploying sanctions against Iran aggressively for “immediate maximum impact,” Bessent told the Economic Club of New York.

The administration is mistaken if it thinks that further throttling of Iran’s economy is going to compel their government to make concessions. Threatening to “make Iran broke again” seems likely to encourage stiff resistance to whatever the U.S. demands. The Iranian government also has little incentive to yield when it knows that U.S. promises of sanctions relief are empty. It is no wonder that the Iranian government doesn’t want to negotiate with the U.S. under current conditions.