Senior figures in Irans ruling class are secretly moving their fortunes overseas like rats fleeing the ship, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned this week, as nationwide unrest and economic turmoil threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Bessent disclosed that U.S. officials are tracking a surge of capital flight by regime insiders even as protests over the collapsing Iranian rial stretch into a third week and the death toll mounts. We are now seeing the rats fleeing the ship. Because we can see tens of millions of dollars being wired out of the countrysnuck out of the countryby the Iranian leadership. So they are abandoning ship," Bessent said Wednesday on Newsmax.
He added that we are seeing it come into banks and financial institutions all over the world. And what we do at Treasury is we follow the money, whether it is through the typical banking system or through digital assets. We are going to trace these assets, and they will not be able to keep them," underscoring Washingtons intent to deny Tehrans elite a safe financial haven.
The unrest began as a backlash to financial mismanagement and the free fall of the rial, but it has evolved into a broader anti-regime uprising that the theocratic government has met with extraordinary brutality. Irans crackdown has produced a staggering human cost, with estimates ranging from at least 12,000 to as many as 20,000 deaths, according to CBS News, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators.
The administration moved Thursday to tighten the screws further, unveiling a new tranche of sanctions targeting Iranian officials involved in the repression of protesters, freezing any U.S.-linked assets and barring American firms from doing business with them. At the same time, the Pentagon has begun a precautionary drawdown of some personnel and equipment from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which Iran targeted with missiles last summer after U.S. strikes on Tehrans nuclear facilities, though those attacks caused minimal damage.
Bessent argued that the regimes current crisis is the direct result of President Trumps hard-line strategy toward Tehran and its terror-sponsoring apparatus. Were quickly approaching the endgame of President Trumps plan that he put into effect almost immediately when he came into office. Weve been applying a maximum pressure campaign on Irans oil exports to cut off the sources of the regimes funding. And what we have seen in the past month is a total financial collapse of the regime," Bessent said, suggesting that as the clerical leadership scrambles to spirit its wealth abroad, Washingtons resolve may finally be forcing Irans rulers to confront the consequences of decades of corruption and aggression.
Login