The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has recently announced a new economic offensive against Iran, which he described as the operation with the greatest impact ever undertaken against a country.
Texas intermediate oil (WTI) prices opened this Friday with a drop of 0.15%, to $86.70 per barrel, but crude oil is on track to register its second consecutive week of gains.
At 09:00 local time (13:00 GMT), the WTI crude oil futures contracts for October, the benchmark in the United States, were down by $0.13 from the previous close.
The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, suggested yesterday that Washington will not resume attacks against Iran while it carries out a coordinated campaign of “maximum economic pressure” against Tehran, and he cited Venezuela and Cuba as examples showing that the combination of “blockade” and sanctions yields results.
“I will announce a press conference on Monday to say exactly what we’re going to do (…). I’m not sure why oil has gone up because of this, because, for now, and this is at the discretion of the president, if we are applying maximum economic pressure, it means there probably won’t be a large-scale kinetic restart,” Bessent said in an interview on the CNBC channel.
For his part, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced this week a new economic offensive against Iran that he described as the highest-impact operation ever undertaken against a country, with the aim of cutting off the channels for funding and economic support to the Islamic Republic.
“I announce the most devastating economic operation ever undertaken against any country,” Trump said on his social network, Truth Social, where he warned that any country that allows its financial institutions, companies, airports, or government entities to provide “any type of lifeline” to Iran will face economic consequences as well.
The President clarified that the measure includes cutting off the routes used to evade sanctions and maintain financial flows to Iran, including oil smuggling, foreign-exchange swap lines, cash transfers, money-exchange houses, vessel registry records, and shell companies.
Trump demanded that all these operations “stop now” and warned that Washington will monitor the countries and entities that allow them to continue.
This comes amid growing frustration over the lack of progress in reopening the Strait of Hormuz or reaching an agreement to end a war that has been going on for almost six months.