The United States is intensifying economic pressure on Iran as Washington prepares to announce a new package of sanctions that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described as the “toughest in history,” amid stalled talks aimed at ending the six-month-old war and continued disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
اضافة اعلان
According to CNN, Iran is already struggling with the impact of years of sanctions and military strikes. Residents in Tehran and Karaj have reported rising prices and shortages of some goods and medicines, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has acknowledged that the country is facing a broad economic, military and security war. He said his government was working to contain inflation and address living costs and employment problems.
New Sanctions
The Trump administration is preparing new measures targeting the Iranian economy in an effort to deprive Tehran of revenue and limit its ability to finance its forces and regional allies. Bessent said the measures would further squeeze Iran’s economy and reduce the regime’s ability to exert influence through its proxies.
Economic experts, however, have warned that the new sanctions could disproportionately hurt ordinary Iranians by weakening the rial, driving up inflation and increasing the cost of imported goods and industrial inputs, while also reducing household purchasing power.
Energy expert Amud Shokri said institutions linked to the Iranian establishment and intermediaries controlling informal trade could be better positioned to protect their interests, while wage earners, retirees, small businesses and low-income households would bear much of the impact.
Shadow Economy
Iran has spent decades developing complex networks to circumvent Western sanctions, including front companies, intermediaries, currency-exchange offices and covert oil tanker fleets. These networks use ship-to-ship transfers, altered tracking data and forged documents to facilitate oil shipments.
U.S. data indicated that $9 billion in covert Iranian banking activity passed through U.S. correspondent accounts in 2024, while front companies linked to the oil, shipping and investment sectors operate through networks extending across the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Experts said Iran also uses the Chinese yuan, barter arrangements and financial channels outside the dollar-based banking system to facilitate transactions, making efforts by Washington to target the Iranian economy more complicated.
Michael Parker, an economic sanctions expert who spent eight years at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, said the new strategy would likely seek to “expand the economic impact” of sanctions by targeting third countries that continue to do business with Iran while remaining dependent on the U.S. dollar.
Parker said Washington has so far mainly used the threat of secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions to encourage compliance with its sanctions policy.
He added that the tool remains largely underused and could target entities with links to both the U.S. dollar and Iran, including foreign financial institutions that help Tehran evade sanctions or transfer funds to the Iranian government.
Evading Sanctions
Iran’s response to the latest measures remains unclear, but sanctions experts say Tehran has demonstrated its ability to use informal channels to circumvent restrictions, including “shadow” fleets transporting oil and newly established commercial fronts not included on U.S. sanctions lists, according to the BBC.
Mohamed Hamouda, director of export controls and sanctions monitoring at the London Stock Exchange, said new names constantly emerge because Iran adapts rapidly.
“Whatever sanctions are imposed, Iran finds a new way around them,” he said.
He added that Iran’s countermeasures often force sanctions-enforcement authorities into a race against time.
“Sanctions are all on paper, but the real work takes place behind the scenes,” Hamouda said, noting that teams around the world work to enforce sanctions and identify entities involved. He said the effectiveness of the measures would ultimately depend largely on how the targeted countries respond.
Resilience
Iran has demonstrated over decades an ability to adapt to sanctions by increasing domestic production and relying on informal trade networks to secure essential goods, particularly from China. Experts say the government has also shown an ability to pass a significant portion of the cost of sanctions on to the population while protecting institutions considered essential to the survival of the regime.
The renewed pressure comes amid protests in Iran over rising prices, inflation and the collapse of the currency. The protests later expanded to include political demands, prompting authorities to accuse demonstrators of working on behalf of foreign powers and launch a broad security crackdown.
Dina Esfandiary, head of Middle East economics at Bloomberg Economics, said Iran’s leadership was prepared to withstand pressure for an extended period. She argued that the measures being considered by Trump were unlikely to force Tehran to surrender and that a solution would require diplomacy and incentives—an option that does not currently appear to be on the table.
