Trump Admin Unveils ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ Against Iran. China Could Be Reached.

The Trump administration has unveiled a plan to impose secondary sanctions on those "enabling" Iran to maintain its economic activity.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the plan is called "Operation Economic Outcast" and appeared to say China could be reached by the measures.

"We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions," he said when asked if the measures could impact Chinese banks or the Trump administration would refrain from doing so to preserve relations with China.

"If they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted," he added. Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to meet with President Donald Trump in September.

Bessent had said earlier on Monday that the plan is the "greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary."

"The Islamic Republic has subsisted by dressing extortion as security guarantees. It has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable. Under President Trump, that era is over. And those who fear the danger of defying Tehran ought not to discount the cost of testing Washington," Bessent claimed in a social media post.

He went on to say that Trump "has created the conditions to leverage every agency, every authority and action many assumed we would never summon. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains the tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.

Officials from the Trump administration, including the president himself, have said the U.S. will double down on economic pressure against Tehran, choosing that path over a return to active conflict.

Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf appeared to acknowledge the impact of economic pressure last week, saying military might alone is not enough to move the country forward.

"No matter how much military power we have, if people are hungry and we don't have financial circulation, economic growth and domestic production, we will not endure," Qalibaf said in a meeting with Iranian and Iraqi business leaders at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad.

He went on to say that economic stability and security are inseparable. "If we establish security but do not sustain it through the economy, it will not last," he added, also accusing the U.S. and Israel of conducting what he described as "cognitive" warfare.