Treasury secretary warns of “financial violence” as G-20 meetings loom

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the Trump administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week as part of an intensified campaign to isolate Iran financially.

In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the Group of 20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, Bessent said the move is designed to further clamp down on transactions involving the Islamic Republic. He will meet individually with his counterparts from major and developing economies at the G-20 to encourage broader participation in the economic pressure campaign.

“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.”

The Treasury secretary recently launched a new campaign urging countries that still do business with Iran — which is already under heavy sanctions — to sever their financial ties or face U.S. retaliation.

The administration’s first action under this initiative came Friday, with a proposed rulemaking that would, if finalized, cut off the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from access to the U.S. financial system. However, by stopping short of imposing direct sanctions on the Egyptian bank itself, the administration appeared to signal reluctance to penalize major trading partners that continue doing business with Iran — including China and India, whose officials Bessent is scheduled to meet this week.

Bessent told the AP he would speak with his Chinese counterparts at the G-20 and that “all options are on the table” regarding potential sanctions on Beijing for its continued purchases from Iran. But he dismissed suggestions that the administration is hesitating, calling it “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on” and insisting that China and the U.S. share common ground on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.