Today’s briefing:
— An economic D-Day for Iran?
— Putin's dress rehearsal
— World leaders take the stage
Your Insider’s briefing:
— An economic D-Day for Iran?
— Putin's dress rehearsal
— World leaders take the stage
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. General Eisenhower famously kept a secret note in his wallet for D-Day, accepting full responsibility if the landings failed.
We haven’t checked the wallet of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, but our working theory is it carries more cash than culpa — it takes a special kind of confidence to announce an “economic D-Day” on a Monday afternoon then seemingly assure everyone some of the most obvious targets might remain off-limits.
But shall we look if Bessent’s big bet is enough to topple Iran’s regime?
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
200,000
That’s how many B-1 (business) and B-2 (tourism) visas the US reportedly now plans to revoke, where holders have applied for or are currently seeking US asylum. The Deputy Secretary of State (Landau) decried frivolous asylum claims on Monday.
(un)Sanctioned actions.
Most US treasury secretaries deliver sanctions policy with the emotional cadence of a microwave instruction manual. Not ol’ Scotty Bessent, who took to the pages of Sunday’s Financial Times to declare a full-blown “economic D-day” against Iran.
So, naturally curious about how ol’ Scottie Pippen now plans to storm the beaches of Iran’s economy, we tuned in yesterday (Monday) afternoon to hear his plans for “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”.
Dubbed Operation Economic Outcast, the contours are pretty straightforward: the US is now threatening to impose secondary sanctions on anyone still doing business with Iran, all to “sever every economic lifeline” for the regime.
He’s also…
a) issuing new sectoral determinations to hit the five key channels Iran uses to keep its economy afloat: digital assets, gold, tech, aviation, and shipping
b) hitting 60 specific entities and individuals already helping Iran, and
c) sanctioning an unnamed major financial institution by the end of this week.
Oh, and “any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system”. 👀
How?
We don’t know for sure, as ol’ Scott Stifler is also describing it all as a warning shot. But he also flagged that President Trump is now calling world leaders with specific asks and timelines to halt their Iran trade and avoid getting burnt.
But even if we don’t know all the deets, we do know who Iran’s top buyers are:
China is Iran’s biggest trade partner, hoovering up ~90% of its cheap oil exports. That netted Tehran more than $30B last year, and while those numbers have roughly halved this year, it’s not because Beijing is distancing itself from the regime.
In fact, Beijing’s import data says (with a straight face) that China hasn’t imported a single drop of Iranian oil in years. That’s not because it’s true, but rather because it’s the end result of a world of shadow fleeting, at-sea-transfers, flag-hopping, and re-labelling (often as Malaysian or Omani oil) so the oil lands ‘clean’ — plus settled in yuan via intermediaries — at China’s independent ‘teapot’ refineries in Shandong.
It’s all to give Beijing a veil of plausible deniability.
Meanwhile, it’s actually nerds at places like Kpler that track it all and help us glimpse that China’s oil imports have realistically ~halved this year simply because hardly any oil is now exiting Hormuz (courtesy of the continued US naval blockade).
Russia is another key trade partner, particularly in defence — Putin’s 2022 deal sent Iran a cool $1.75B in return for 6,000 Shahed drones plus the know-how to make them in-house then launch them at neighbouring Ukraine. Putin and Iran are still trading arms — no easier way for Putin to bleed Trump out than to help Iran.
We also know the UAE has long hosted a shadow banking system that helped Iranian entities bypass sanctions (Putin part-paid for his drones via a UAE intermediary), but getting ‘grey-listed’ by FATF forced the Emiratis to tighten up.
Iran’s other big trades are all about selling gas to neighbouring Turkey (~13% of the US ally’s total consumption) and Iraq (~40%!).
And so… how has Iran responded? Interestingly, it’s now vowed to retaliate against anyone who goes along with Operation Economic Outcast — both completely predictable, and yet also a sign the regime does fear DC’s economic hammer.
But also, keep in mind that this is hardly Tehran’s first sanctions rodeo. To the contrary, these guys have been bronco-busting since the 80s, and it’s actually decades of US sanctions that’ve warped the Iranian economy into its current form.
But for now, the bigger and more immediate question is… will ol’ Scott actually follow through with all this?
We’ll explore further below, but something tells us the greatest financial offensive ever marshalled now risks becoming the greatest financial offensive ever delayed.
Intrigue’s Take
Bessent loves a historical flourish: alongside the D-Day metaphor he also invoked…
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Intrigue’s Take
Bessent loves a historical flourish: alongside the D-Day metaphor he also invoked the fall of the Berlin Wall — the moment ordinary soldiers simply refused to shoot.
His point was clear enough: regimes collapse when their thugs stop thugging, so maybe you stop the enablers from enabling until eventually, the thugs’ pay-checks just end.
And yet the thing about ol’ F. Scott Fitzgerald’s D-Day is it risks clashing with other core US ~interests around the world:
Hitting China risks derailing the fragile US-China truce plus the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, with critical US rare-earth supplies already on a knife-edge
Trump has consistently preferred to keep channels open with Putin, even while Putin openly teams up with Trump’s rivals (Iran, North Korea, China, Maduro)
Turkey remains a NATO ally whose airspace, bases, and Black Sea posture remain useful to other US interests across the region, and
Squeezing Iraq’s energy security could risk blackouts and unrest, handing even more influence to the country’s various Iran-aligned militias.
The closest to a slam-dunk might be the Emiratis who, long now bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks, announced last week that they’re ceasing all trade with Iran.
But clearly the big question here is really whether ol’ Bon Scott will actually do anything on Iran’s biggest customer, China. And yet when the press hit him with this exact question, Bessent answered with a classic twofer:
“No one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions”, but also…
“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”
That sounds like an elaborate way to say “no”, but effectively hoping the public threat combined with private diplomacy might still nudge Beijing to help some more.
But even if ol’ Ridley Scott does pull the trigger, we’ve already seen how China might respond: not just squeezing the US on critical supply chains, but after earlier US sanctions on a few Chinese refineries, Beijing simply banned its companies from recognising the sanctions!
So all this to say that, clearly, the specific new sanctions plus the continued naval blockade will put further pressure on what is an odious regime.
But as for this broader D-Day? It sounds a lot like Scotty from Finance giving an elaborate flourish to a known playbook: maximalist rhetoric hiding systemic caution.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇨🇦 CANADA — More tariffs?
President Trump says he’ll double his tariffs on Canada’s auto sector to 50% from 1 January, as the two neighbours trade blame for their last-minute collapse in trade talks. Meanwhile, Canada’s Carney is flagging he’ll return to the negotiating table if the US comes with “the right attitude”. (Reuters)
Comment: To give you a sense just how integrated US-Canada automotive supply chains are, parts and components routinely cross the border a half a dozen times before a finished vehicle rolls off the line. So the US president is now risking real blowback in Detroit, right as he needs midterm votes in Michigan.
🇸🇸 SOUTH SUDAN — UN peacekeepers killed.
Unidentified gunmen have ambushed and killed two UN peacekeepers from Ethiopia while they were on patrol in South Sudan’s restive east. (UN News)
Comment: The location (Jonglei state) is telling, with strategic corridors and towns routinely getting seized by opposition forces then re-seized by the government, as the country teeters on the verge of another civil war. But why target the UN? Multiple groups have a history of hostility towards the local mission (UNMISS), believing it’s biased towards rivals.
🇵🇰 PAKISTAN — Capital market comeback?
Pakistan is signalling a return to commercial capital markets (Eurobonds, sukuk, and even rupee-linked dollar bonds) in hopes of gradually restoring international investor confidence. (FT $)
Comment: Islamabad is also framing it as an effort to diversify away from dependence on bilateral loans from China, but it’s got no beef with the yuan — Pakistan just debuted in China’s domestic bond market in May, and is planning another $750M ‘panda’ bond as part of this same raise.
🇷🇺 RUSSIA — Mobilisation dry-runs?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting — per Western intel — that Putin has been running nationwide exercises to test his ability to absorb a fresh wave of mobilised troops for his ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Moscow denies the claims. (WSJ $)
Comment: Publicly, Putin insists a second wave of mobilisation isn’t even needed, relying on lucrative signup bonuses to attract contract soldiers. But he *has* to say that, both to maintain the fiction that his war is going just fine, and to avoid another generation of young men fleeing before the order drops (presumably after September’s Duma elections). The news comes amid reports Putin is suffering heavy losses around Ukraine’s Lyman, and just as Ukraine uses its own 35th anniversary of independence to flaunt its increasingly impressive drone capabilities.
🇸🇾 SYRIA — Terrorism designation lifted.
The US has officially removed Syria from State’s terrorism sponsor list after more than four decades, lifting a major legal wall that’s long barred foreign investment and banking transactions with the country. (Le Monde)
Comment: Coming after Damascus joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, DC is basically declaring that post-Assad Syria has now changed enough to justify the risk. Plus it’s betting that the benefits of a stable Syria will outweigh the frustration of US allies next door in Israel, where Bibi still harbours suspicions from al-Sharaa’s jihadi origin story, and is unlikely to take any comfort from the US also now de-listing al-Sharaa’s HTS movement.
🇮🇳 INDIA — Porsche hands the keys to TCS.
India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) just inked a $1.5B deal to revamp Porsche’s IT and digital architecture, while buying the German automaker’s 4,500-employee IT consulting arm for $373M. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: Lots of ways to look at this, but one of Europe’s most iconic brands effectively outsourcing its AI future to India’s largest IT firm to stay competitive? That feels like another quiet data point in an industrial shift eastward, and a valuable TCS foothold to keep selling westward.
🇪🇺 EUROPEAN UNION — Draghi 2.0?
Italy’s famed European central banker Mario Draghi and Ireland’s billionaire young Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison have launched the Rhine Group, aimed at turning Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report into concrete reforms towards European revival. (EuroNews 🇮🇹)
Comment: We dig the ambition (rise above the daily politics towards a common destiny), the reformist strategy (laid out in Draghi’s report), and even the method (pooling 52 of Europe’s sharpest minds, including Shopify and Klarna co-founders plus a former president of Estonia). But there’s also a dash of irony in Europe’s elite answer to stagnation being… another elite working group, not to mention some of the early responses reflecting more European division (like why dynamic Poland didn’t get an invite). But anything’s worth a try.
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Theatre of the day
Pic courtesy of ZTS / Kira Kynd
Most retired foreign ministers write dull memoirs. Switzerland’s Micheline Calmy-Rey opted for community theatre instead.
As part of this month’s annual Zürcher Theater Spektakel she’s appearing — alongside other real-life heavyweights like a former PM of Sweden (Löfven) and an ex-president of Slovakia (Čaputová) — in a participatory theatre piece in Zurich!
They all play versions of themselves debating whether Switzerland should join a fictional International Democratic Alliance against rising authoritarianism. The audience also gets ✌️cast✌️ as Swiss citizens who can ask questions, speak, and — in the final act — vote!
The “yes” side apparently keeps winning, which is no surprise in the more progressive Zurich. But the whole thing just feels so Swiss: earnest, polished, and (sorry) bureaucratic, as if a citizens’ assembly somehow got lost en route to Bern.
Anyway, we like to think that somewhere in Los Feliz, a method actor is taking notes.
Today’s poll
Do you think the US will actually sanction China for its trade with Iran?
Yesterday’s poll: What should the West do first to close any robotics gap with China?
💸 More subsidies (18%)
🚫 More tariffs / import bans (5%)
⛓️ More allied reshoring of supply chains (38%)
💽 Double down on software, leave the hardware to China (18%)
🦾 Nothing - enjoy the cheap robots (17%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (3%)
Your two cents:
⛓️ R.C: “Reducing our supply chain vulnerabilities is critical for all the West to support emerging technologies and security.”
🦾 D: “The new normal. China and other rising nations lead the way in initial innovation while wealthy, established economies obtain, then commercialize and adapt.”
💸 J: “With China subsidizing every corner of the economy, we need to do the same. If we can subsidize a ballroom, we most certainly can subsidize this technology.”