Iran Vows Retaliation as US Readies Sweeping Sanctions
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- Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei threatened "earthquake-like" retaliation against countries joining the US sanctions campaign and warned Gulf neighbors that "not a drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz" if they cooperate, also threatening other Gulf oil export routes.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent billed the measures as "the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary," writing in the Financial Times that "total financial isolation can obviate the need for American force" and declaring "either the countries are with us or against us."
- The UAE ended all trade with Iran ahead of the US announcement, a move Tehran believes was coordinated with Washington; the UAE was Iran's single biggest Middle Eastern trading partner.
- China signaled continued defiance, with foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian opposing "unilateral sanctions" and reiterating Beijing's May directive to Chinese firms to ignore US warnings on Iranian oil — after the US backed off earlier threats against Hengli Petrochemical to avoid a wider trade war.
- Iran's crude exports have "virtually stopped" per central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati due to a US naval blockade, with the rial down 4.5% on the unregulated market to 1.992 million per dollar since Trump announced a "crushing economic operation."
- Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the expected sanctions as a sign of US desperation, arguing Washington had shifted from military operations back to "the same old plans," while Iran-linked international lawyer Reza Nasri called the secondary sanctions "a claim of jurisdiction over the world" targeting sovereignty itself.
Why it matters: Bessent's binary "with us or against us" framing forces Iran's remaining trade partners to choose, but the campaign's credibility hinges on whether the US can extract compliance from China, India, and Russia — none of whom have signaled submission, and China has already deployed domestic legal tools to neutralize US secondary sanctions. The leverage test is real but asymmetric: Tehran cannot replace lost oil revenue, but Washington cannot easily enforce secondary sanctions against economies the size of China's.
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