Intensifying U.S. Economic Pressure: Washington’s New Move Against the Mullahs’ Regime and Its Consequences
By Reza Hoseani
Is Washington’s economic fury more effective than military warfare? An examination of the United States’ new sanctions targeting the IRGC’s financial lifelines and their impact on Iran’s explosive social environment.
Amid the regime’s paralyzing deadlock between war and restraint, Washington has made its choice unmistakably clear: an all-out economic war instead of a large-scale military war.
This choice is not the product of moderation. Rather, it reflects an understanding that economic pressure may be more lethal to the regime, less costly for the West, and more socially acceptable to the Iranian people than military intervention.
1. From “Maximum Pressure” to “Economic Fury”: The IRGC’s Lifelines in the Crosshairs
In recent months, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has escalated economic pressure through two new initiatives.
First came what has been described as Operation Economic Fury, announced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He stated explicitly that the United States would impose “the toughest sanctions in history” on Iran and argued that if Washington fully implemented maximum economic pressure, it would probably have no need to resume large-scale military operations.
Second, Washington has turned its attention directly to the heart of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ economic machinery. The Treasury Department announced sanctions against more than 30 individuals, companies, and vessels connected to Iran’s shadow fleet — from oil brokers in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong to tanker operators in China and the head of Iran’s state-owned oil company.
These measures directly target the IRGC’s oil networks, including Turkey-based companies that allegedly move hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of IRGC oil every year.
Washington is no longer targeting only the tanker; it is targeting the terminal itself.
On August 21, 2025, two major Chinese oil-storage operators at ports in Shandong and Zhejiang were sanctioned after reportedly handling more than 65 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2025.
The message is unmistakable. According to the Treasury Department, “any person or vessel that facilitates illicit oil trade is exposed to U.S. sanctions.”
In addition, nine other individuals and entities involved in procurement networks supplying weapons to the IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Defense through China and Hong Kong were sanctioned.
2. Why Can’t the Regime Use War as a Weapon?
The Islamic Republic’s clerical establishment has repeatedly used war and external crises as a shield for its survival. But the current conflict has two characteristics that make it unusable for the regime.
A. It lacks legitimacy
Iranian society, which took to the streets in late 2024 amid the economic crisis, does not view this war as a war fought on behalf of the Iranian people. Rather, it sees it as a war being waged to preserve the IRGC and the Supreme Leader’s inner circle.
B. It carries a negative social cost
At a time when the U.S. dollar has surpassed 1,000,000 rials on the free market and gold coins have reached new record highs, any military adventurism would mean gasoline lines, emptying store shelves, and growing public anxiety — as witnessed in Tehran on August 24.
That is why, when Washington threatened “economic warfare and unprecedented isolation,” the regime’s response was not military bravado but economic countermeasures.
The regime knows very well that its threats to expand the war — even into Europe — could come at an enormous cost.
3. The Regime’s Response: From Crisis Management to Tightening Repression
A day after Bessent’s warning, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that Iran must “develop a plan to overcome the unjust sanctions.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the sanctions as “economic terrorism,” claiming that they target ordinary people.
This rhetoric is a sign of fear.
The reason is that the new sanctions strike precisely at the financial lifelines the IRGC needs for two vital purposes: funding the machinery of domestic repression and financing its proxy forces abroad.
Reports from inside Iran indicate that the Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting in May 2025 to assess the possibility of renewed protests and a worsening economic crisis.
This demonstrates that the regime understands very well that mounting economic pressure could push an already explosive society toward an organized uprising. That is precisely why it has begun reorganizing its apparatus of repression.
4. Conclusion: Sanctions as a Catalyst for an Uprising
Experience has shown that without money, the regime is crippled.
When the Treasury Department says it has blocked tens of billions of dollars in regime revenues and dismantled its clandestine banking network, the practical meaning is that funding for special security units, the Basij militia, and dollars destined for Hezbollah and the Houthis is being squeezed.
This is precisely where our analysis is confirmed: economic pressure can be more effective than war because it:
- strips the regime of the political legitimacy it could otherwise derive from war;
- does not produce the same negative social backlash among ordinary people, but can instead generate sympathy for them;
- prevents the regime from exploiting the conflict as a patriotic weapon;
- creates conditions in which a spark could ignite a nationwide uprising.
But sanctions alone will not bring down the regime.
The decisive condition for victory is to connect this external pressure with the genuine force for change on the streets.
The only force capable of bringing this severely weakened regime to its knees is an organized popular resistance, together with a battle-hardened generation of young people who have already altered the balance of power.
Today’s explosive and revolutionary conditions represent a historic opportunity after 120 years of relentless struggle against two dictatorships: the monarchy and the theocracy.
When a nationwide uprising is ignited — whatever the immediate spark may be — it will surge forward like a raging, uncontrollable flood. That flood will not be stoppable, and it will wash away the entire structure of this regime.
About the Author
Reza Hoseani has been writing on political and social developments in Iran and the Middle East for over two decades. His main focus is on strategies to contain the Iranian regime’s warmongering and to support the Iranian people’s democratic movements.
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