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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new round of US sanctions on Iran at a press conference in Washington on Monday, August 24, naming the campaign Operation Economic Outcast.
Treasury said the measures target a network of brokers, companies and shadow fleet vessels operating across the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Switzerland and Europe. The department accused that network of moving Iranian oil and channeling the revenue to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. Bessent described the objective as severing every economic lifeline that sustains the Iranian government until Tehran stands alone.
The administration held back its heaviest measures. Bessent said President Trump is telephoning world leaders with specific requests to stop dealing with Tehran, and that governments are being given time to change course. He declined to set a timeline for secondary sanctions on Iran's largest trading partners, including China, which he said has historically bought about 90 percent of Iranian oil. Asked whether Chinese banks could be designated, he said no one is beyond the reach of US sanctions.
The stated purpose is to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz and end a war now in its sixth month. Iran's security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, told state television over the weekend that Tehran would respond in a seismic manner. Rezaei, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, warned Gulf states that any country joining the restrictions would be treated as an enemy and a target. He said Iran would again go after oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf, adding that "not even a single drop of oil will leave the region."
Iran is not currently interfering with those routes. Energy exports from the Gulf have already suffered the largest disruption in their history because of the war and Iran's closure of the strait. Gulf governments that spent billions of dollars on pipelines built to bypass Hormuz had not commented on the US plan.
Monday's action follows a long run of Treasury designations. On August 7 the department sanctioned Shahr Bank and two Dubai exchange houses, Titan Exchange and Alps International, over an alleged scheme to recover oil revenue for Iranian exporters including the National Iranian Oil Company. That was the eighth such action since the start of the second Trump administration. Inside Iran, the rial fell past 2 million to the dollar ahead of Monday's announcement, and government figures put inflation near 90 percent.
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