Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that the US has an “addiction” to sanctions and vowed that Iran wouldn’t be “strangled” by the economic pressure.
“The US Secretary of the Treasury has boasted of ‘suffocating’ Iran through economic sanctions,” Baghaei wrote on X, appearing to reference comments made by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent back in May.
“Beyond its sheer pathos, the claim is a stark testament to America’s compulsive addiction to sanctions. Whenever Washington proves itself incapable of pursuing diplomacy, it retreats into sanctions; and whenever those sanctions fail to produce results, it simply increases the dose,” Baghaei added.
His post came a day after President Trump said that the US was only “semi-negotiating” with Iran and “watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” suggesting he planned to continue attempts to crush the Iranian economy after weeks of military strikes failed to force Tehran’s capitulation.
Baghaei noted that Iran has been facing US economic pressure for many years. “Iran has demonstrated over decades that it will not be strangled by these exhausted refrains,” he said. “The real risk is that American politicians, clinging to this bad habit, will instead strangle their own remaining chances of a less humiliating exit from a crisis of their own making.”
Today, the US economic pressure includes the continued blockade of Iranian ports, which US Central Command has claimed involved the “re-directing” of 55 ships since it was re-imposed last month. Iranian officials have said the blockade must be lifted for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened. Iran has laid out other conditions, including the lifting of economic sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian funds, and compensation for war damages.
