Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Sunday that Iran will have “nothing left to trade for anything” within roughly two weeks as its remaining oil reaches China, arguing that the Trump administration’s economic campaign has brought Tehran “to its knees” and is driving the regime to seek a deal.
Bessent said only about 15 million barrels of Iranian oil remain on the water as the United States maintains its blockade of Iranian exports, leaving Tehran close to exhausting one of its remaining major sources of revenue.
“I am confident, given that there are only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water, that Iran will have nothing left to trade for anything,” Bessent told Fox News’s Larry Kudlow on Sunday Morning Futures.
Bessent put the remaining window at roughly two weeks.
“Probably within the next two weeks, they are going to make their final deliveries of oil to China, and then they will have nothing,” he said. “It is an empty set, and I believe they are feeling the pressure here and that’s why they want a deal.”
Bessent’s assessment comes as President Donald Trump has rejected Tehran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while signaling that negotiations could continue this week, saying Iran is now seeking terms Washington might have accepted before the war.
“They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make,” Trump told Axios on Sunday. “It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand.”
Bessent argued that the changing balance is visible in the strait itself, dismissing Iran’s offer to reopen the waterway within seven days as a concession when millions of barrels of oil from other countries are already moving through it under U.S. protection.
“The straits are open,” Bessent declared. “If you take out the Iranian oil, which we are not letting out, we’re averaging now 15 to 22 million barrels a day; it was at about 20 pre-conflict.”
Bessent cast the result as a stark measure of who now controls the flow of oil through the strait.
“Think of it this way: the score is United States, one billion — more than one billion barrels have gotten out — and Iran, zero.”
The blockade has increasingly worked in tandem with Operation Economic Outcast, the sweeping financial campaign Bessent launched at Trump’s direction in late August to sever Iran’s remaining economic lifelines and isolate the regime from the international financial system.
The campaign has extended far beyond Iran itself. Treasury officials have engaged more than 50 countries as Washington presses governments, banks, airlines, and businesses to choose between maintaining ties with Tehran and access to the United States. Jonathan Burke, Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, recently traveled across the Middle East and Europe carrying that message directly to Iran’s trading partners.
Bessent highlighted the results Saturday, saying U.S. pressure had led Turkey and Oman to move against Iran’s Mahan Air, the United Arab Emirates to halt Iranian airline service and restrict Bank Melli, and Turkey to take action against Bank Mellat. Treasury has also expanded the campaign against Iran’s maritime, cryptocurrency, and other sanctions-evasion networks.
Bessent said Sunday that the cumulative campaign is increasingly severing Iran from the global economy.
“They are isolated from the world,” he said. “They are a pariah state.”
Trump reinforced Bessent’s assessment Sunday evening, explicitly describing the economic campaign and U.S. military pressure as complementary fronts in the war against Iran.
Asked by Fox News whether the United States could prevail through Treasury’s economic campaign, Trump answered that he believes both forms of pressure will deliver the result.
“I think both,” Trump said. “I think we’ll win it both ways.”
Trump went further on the military front, saying the United States has “already won it, really, from a military standpoint,” while cautioning that the campaign is not necessarily over.
“That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped that,” he said. “But we’re certainly winning it very big.”
Trump predicted the conflict would end “very soon” and cast preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as the overriding U.S. objective.
“And the key is Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump emphasized. “That’s the key to the whole thing.”
That nuclear demand is now at the center of efforts to revive negotiations. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that mediators are pressing Tehran to offer a concession on its nuclear program following Trump’s rejection of Iran’s proposal, although Iran has so far given them little indication that it is prepared to do so.
Tehran has sought relief from the blockade and sanctions, access to billions of dollars in frozen assets and other concessions as part of a return to negotiations. Washington, meanwhile, has insisted that Iran address its nuclear program and sees little reason to surrender leverage that administration officials argue is strengthening by the day.
Bessent made clear that he sees the pressure campaign as serving a purpose beyond simply bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table: changing the terms under which Iran arrives there and ensuring that any new agreement is harder for the regime to abandon.
“My job is to make sure that, when they come with a deal, that they want to stick to it,” Bessent said, pointing to Iran’s failure to abide by the previous memorandum of understanding.
This time, he argued, Washington intends to negotiate from a dramatically different position.
“Next time, if there is a deal — and that’s at President Trump’s discretion — they will stick to it,” Bessent said. “Because they are on their knees.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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