{"text":[[{"start":12.62,"text":"Scott Bessent said the US was expanding secondary sanctions on Iran but offered no deadline for Tehran’s trading partners to comply before Washington imposed measures he said could “blow up” the world’s financial system."}],[{"start":26.046,"text":"The US Treasury secretary’s announcement on Monday included warnings that countries would be given “a defined timeline” to end trade with Iran and that entities helping Tehran launder money or evade sanctions could be “cut off from the US financial system”."}],[{"start":40.28,"text":"But the announcement stopped short of sweeping immediate action against countries including China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iraq, the republic’s largest trading partners before the Iran war."}],[{"start":52.08,"text":"Bessent’s announcement contrasted with his earlier warnings of a new financial offensive against Tehran. Writing in the FT on Sunday, he said the US was preparing an “economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”."}],[{"start":67.16,"text":"Bessent said on Monday that the US was targeting five sectors of the Iranian economy — digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping — for its expansion of secondary sanctions."}],[{"start":78.32,"text":"He described it as a warning that Washington could take more aggressive economic action against Iran’s trading partners."}],[{"start":84.16,"text":"“We are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behaviour. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Bessent told reporters. “We believe that it is important to level set, but they should know that we will move very quickly and that we are serious.”"}],[{"start":99.4,"text":"The new warnings come nearly six months since President Donald Trump launched a war against the Islamic republic, which is already under strict US and international sanctions that have cut it off from the global financial system. The war has evolved into a stalemate."}],[{"start":113.393,"text":"Weeks of US air strikes and a naval blockade have failed to topple the Iranian regime or force a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway for trade in and out of the Gulf."}],[{"start":124.78,"text":"Efforts to reach a negotiated settlement have collapsed, leaving Trump’s administration struggling to find a way out of a conflict that is unpopular domestically and has helped push up inflation."}],[{"start":134.857,"text":"The US threat to tighten economic pressure on Iran and states that trade with it comes despite the mixed results of its efforts to punish countries that have been doing business with Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine."}],[{"start":146.76,"text":"But Bessent said the US was expecting countries to comply."}],[{"start":149.96,"text":"“The president is making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime. We are already seeing results,” the Treasury secretary said."}],[{"start":159.92,"text":"“If they do not take action, we will do so unilaterally through Treasury authorities,” Bessent said. “We do not have infinite patience here.”"}],[{"start":168.52,"text":"Just last month, the Treasury imposed sanctions on entities and people in China, India, Russia and Iran, including sales agents for the Iranian airline Mahan Air, which had been hit with sanctions by the EU and US. The department has applied sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges and more than 100 vessels tied to Iran’s “shadow fleet” since the start of the year."}],[{"start":190.68,"text":"The Treasury department did not immediately respond to questions on Monday about how the latest sanctions differed from the administration’s previous efforts."}],[{"start":198.96,"text":"Experts say the enforcement of sprawling campaigns is difficult, as new entities pop up quickly as others come under sanctions."}],[{"start":206.36,"text":"Iran has endured decades of US and western sanctions and developed circuitous trade routes and other methods to evade the measures."}],[{"start":214.04,"text":"During his first term, Trump adopted what he described as a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic republic after he abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal Tehran signed with the US and other world powers."}],[{"start":226.28,"text":"The US-Israeli conflict against Iran has deepened the republic’s economic malaise as the government grapples with runaway inflation and a plummeting currency. Steel and petrochemical factories, crucial export sectors, have been damaged or destroyed, and the US has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports."}],[{"start":244.32,"text":"But Iran analysts say the economic pressure is unlikely to force Tehran to cave to Trump’s demands, as it believes it can tolerate more pain than the US and that it has the upper hand in the conflict."}],[{"start":254.4,"text":"“It’s not a little island. It’s very difficult to impose a hermetic seal around it. I think this is more of a psychological warfare, it’s also aimed at creating a chilling effect,” said Ali Vaez at Crisis Group, a think-tank."}],[{"start":266.64,"text":"“A second factor is whether the US would have the political will to go to war economically, especially against China, to try to enforce this. On that front, Trump, so far, has demonstrated that he doesn’t have the will to take that risk.”"}],[{"start":286.96,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1787641737_4745.mp3"}