US plans to sanction another bank in drive to clamp down on Iran transactions: Bessent

ASHEVILLE: The Trump administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week in an effort to clamp down on Iran transactions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.

Bessent spoke with The Associated Press ahead of Group of 20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, where he will meet individually with his counterparts from the world’s major and developing economies to encourage participation in the economic isolation of Iran.

“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent said in the interview. “We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop.”

Bessent had recently announced a new campaign to push countries that still do business with the already heavily-sanctioned Islamic Republic to sever their financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.

Treasury’s first official action in this campaign was a proposed rulemaking on Friday, which would, if finalised, sever the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from access to the US financial system.

In stopping short of imposing sanctions on the Egyptian bank, the Republican administration appeared to be signaling its reluctance to penalise major trading partners that do business with Iran, including China and India, whose officials Bessent will have meetings with this week.

Bessent told the AP he would speak to his Chinese counterparts at the G-20 meeting and “all options are on the table” in terms of sanctioning Beijing for its continued purchases.

But he downplayed this reluctance in the interview, calling it “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on” and insisting that China and the US agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.