You Know Who You Are

President Trump and Scott Bessent have decided to deal an economic death blow to Iran, its proxies and funders by placing unprecedented sanctions against any country helping Iran. “You know who you are.”

This is basically a very strong warning to Communist China and its banks who are helping Iran evade sanctions. The UAE just agreed to cut off Iran a few days ago.

Turkey and Iraq are also in the cross-hairs. Those four are the big ones...

Iran’s top partners by total merchandise trade are:

1. China — $32.4 billion

2. United Arab Emirates — $28.2-35 billion

3. Turkey — $17.3 billion

4. Iraq — $12.3 billion

5. European Union — $6.7 billion

6. India — approximately $3.6 billion

7. Pakistan — approximately $3.0 billion

8. Russia — approximately $2.5 billion

9. Afghanistan — approximately $2.4 billion

10. Oman — approximately $2.4 billion

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a Deal than me. TRAGICALLY, for them, they have failed to take it. Therefore, today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!

This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless, and their country is hanging by a thread.

Today, I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW.

You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat.

These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide. IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

“Economic D-Day” against Iran represents the most aggressive deployment of secondary economic sanctions in modern history, weaponizing the U.S. financial system to force global alignment.

The teeth in this is secondary sanctions. Unlike primary sanctions, which only prevent U.S. citizens and companies from trading with Iran, secondary sanctions tell the rest of the world: “You can trade with Iran, or you can trade with the United States, but you cannot do both.”

In other words, military action and economic strangulation has worked so far to weaken Iran and force it to its knees. This is the final step required. It sounds to me like Trump and Bessent believed that Iran would surrender by now but the Chinese Communist Party is still keeping them alive. Xi’s goal is to keep the chaos going and gas prices high through mid-terms to hurt Trump and help Democrats. Trump and Bessent plan to end that support now.

Because the United States controls access to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and the global dollar clearing system, foreign banks that ignore this warning face being entirely cut off from the global financial grid.

For most international institutions, sacrificing their access to the U.S. market and the U.S. dollar to preserve trade with Iran is economic suicide. The strategy is already working by forcing Iran’s largest trading partners into a corner.

China is Iran’s biggest economic lifeline and the primary buyer of its illicit oil. By targeting “ship registries, front companies, and swap lines,” Trump is directly threatening the Chinese regional banks and “ghost fleets” that facilitate these transactions. Turkey and Iraq rely heavily on Iranian energy (natural gas and electricity) and cross-border trade.

Sanctions evasion usually relies on a complex, shadowy web of alternative finance. By specifically naming oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, and front companies, this places tremendous pressure on maritime nations (like Panama, Liberia, or the Marshall Islands) to immediately de-register any “dark fleet” tankers transporting Iranian crude oil.

My guess is that President Trump’s sudden pivot to “Economic D-Day” is heavily timed to clear the board and maximize his leverage before the Republican convention scheduled for September 9–10, 2026 and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States on September 23, 2026. Trump wants the “war” wrapped up by then - six weeks before mid-terms.

SCOTT BESSENT: “WE ARE GOING TO COLLAPSE THIS REGIME. This is going to be the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD.”

“You are with us or against us. You want this murderous regime to END. If you insist on doing business with them? Transferring money, buying oil? THE US TREASURY WILL PUT ITS FULL MIGHT AND FORCE AGAINST YOU!”

“Time for the rest of the world to make a decision. We are going to squash the economy of this murderous regime. This WILL work. It worked in Venezuela, it’s working in Cuba. It’s going to work in Iran.”

IMHO, I believe that Trump is saying that he owns the Hormuz Strait to irk China. Most people don’t know this story. This is all part of the strategy.

Did you know that Communist China claims ownership of roughly 90% of the South China Sea? They use something called the nine-dash line to mark their territory! It’s literally a line made up of NINE hand-written dashes in a semi-circle!

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire sea—and the sea’s estimated 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and Taiwan all say China doesn’t own it. They ALL do!

In recent years, satellite imagery has shown China’s increased efforts to CONTROL land in the South China Sea by physically increasing the islands‘ size or creating new ones altogether. In addition to piling sand onto existing reefs, China has even constructed ports, military installations, and airstrips to try to assert ownership.

An international tribunal under the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China’s nine-dash line had no legal basis and violated the maritime rights of neighboring coastal states.

The United States agrees that Communist China does not own or control the South China Sea and wants to ensure freedom of navigation there FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD just as they do in the Hormuz Strait!

Wouldn’t it be nice if the talking heads on the fake news told you this stuff?

Trump’s strategy is working and the economic escalation will put the final nail in the coffin. How do I know? Even CNN admits it.

This is the first time I’ve seen CNN report the truth - that President Trump is correct about the situation in Iran. We are in control. Usually CNN lies about this and makes it sound like Trump is lying and Iran is winning.

CNN: “The battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz has become the focal point of the Iran war.

At the moment, the evidence is clear: The United States, patrolling the strait with its navy, has gained ground – and Iran is losing much of its control of the critical waterway.

More than 80% of vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks have taken the Omani route – a UN-authorized shipping channel that Iran vehemently opposes.

Iran has attacked dozens of ships that tried to to travel the waterway via the north coast of Oman. Despite the risk, most ships have recently chosen to ignore Iran’s demands and cross the strait with the promise of protection from US naval forces.

The sharp reduction in traffic around Iran’s preferred route has prevented Iran from charging tolls on ship traffic through the strait.

The expiration of the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran this week in theory allows Iran to begin charging tolls again. But it doesn’t appear the country has been able to.

“Iran’s request to collect tolls is something that most Middle East folks don’t want to do and haven’t been doing. So the Oman route absolutely makes the most sense.”

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have chartered Very Large Crude oil Carriers (VLCCs) – the biggest oil tankers – to transit out of the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, then transferring the oil to customers’ tankers outside the danger zone in the Gulf of Oman.

To evade Iran’s attacks, they’ve turned their transponders off, often for weeks on end. But the United States, with significant military force on the water, has eyes on all ships passing through the strait and has reported significantly higher oil shipping numbers than most traditional estimates had previously suggested.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright last week said that combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around the waterway totaled around 15 million barrels per day over the course of a week – much closer to the 20-million-barrel average from before the war.

That led President Donald Trump to declare [accurately] that the United States has “total control over the strait.”

If tankers are getting as much oil through the strait as the United States claims, then Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz is diminished greatly.”

That’s what CNN had to say. It shocked me that they were telling the truth for once!

In addition, the United Arab Emirates’ suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran today. Iran imported roughly $21 billion in goods from the UAE in 2024 alone, making up over 30% of its total imports. Losing this primary trade partner drastically restricts Iran’s access to foreign currency, essential goods, and supply chains.

Combined with the U.S. Navy’s dominance over the Omani shipping route, this financial cutoff effectively sandwiches Iran between a heavy maritime blockade and a devastating regional economic embargo.

This is why President Trump no longer feels a need to have talks with Iran. We are in control.

Even though Iran is in talks with Oman, it’s unlikely that Oman will hand control to Iran. The Southern route is already working in practice, much to the dismay of Iran, but there is no reason to change the status quo now.

On August 17 Trump told Fox News: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” and later added in the Oval Office that Oman hadn’t “behaved very well” but the U.S. would “handle them very easily.”

Oman is America’s oldest treaty ally in the Gulf. Hosting U.S. military access and serving as a quiet mediator has been core to its foreign policy.

Oman has strong incentives to avoid any arrangement that hands Iran real control or damages the other Gulf producers. In short, Oman has far more to lose by deliberately empowering Iran at the expense of free navigation and Gulf solidarity than it has to gain.

In addition, Trump is working to restart the Keystone XL pipeline which will further reduce the world’s need to rely on the Strait of Hormuz and other CCP-controlled oil chokepoints.

The Keystone XL pipeline, that was cancelled by Biden in 2021, could not only add significant volume to the Midwest and Gulf States but encourage investment in badly needed pipeline infrastructure to the West Coast. That would be a win win for America and Canada energy markets.

Trump approved it in 2017 and Biden cancelled it in 2021. If it gets back online - that’s 830,000 barrels a day delivered from sources close to home.

Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office (January 20, 2021) via Executive Order 13990, primarily citing bogus “climate change” as the reason.

Reports indicate roughly 300 miles had been built (mostly in Canada) or about 8% of the total length when Biden revoked the permit. After the permit revocation, TC Energy halted work and laid off over 1,000 workers.

In addition, the CCP is seizing assets from its wealthiest citizens to pay the bills.

Xi’s China sentenced the founder of the property giant Evergrande to life in prison and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized his $50 BILLION in assets for themselves. This is a great example of how Communism works.

Hui Ka Yan (also known as Xu Jiayin), the founder and former chairman of China Evergrande Group, was sentenced on August 20, 2026, by the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court to life in prison.

All his personal property was confiscated for “the greater good” of the CCP. Hui Ka Yan was once an influential member of the CCP and Xi exploited his success as his own.

The CCP basically enabled and encouraged Hui Ka Yan’s (Xu Jiayin’s) rise—and now the same system is making an example of him while confiscating his assets.

This is a classic pattern under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control of the economy: create the conditions for private entrepreneurs to grow rapidly when it serves growth goals, then tighten, prosecute, and seize their assets when risks, excesses, or political needs dictate.

Hui (born 1958 in rural Henan province) rose from very humble origins—raised largely by his grandmother, working various jobs, then studying metallurgy and starting in the steel industry. In the 1990s he moved to Shenzhen and founded Evergrande in 1996. The company grew aggressively during China’s long property boom, becoming one of the country’s largest developers (at times the top by sales) through high debt, high leverage, and rapid expansion. It expanded into sports, entertainment, finance, and other areas. Hui was once Asia’s richest person.

Evergrande became the most visible symbol of China’s broader property-sector crisis, which has dragged on the economy, left many homebuyers with unfinished projects, and hit banks, investors, and suppliers.

China’s post-1978 reform era, especially the property boom of the 1990s–2010s, was deliberately designed to use real estate as a growth engine. Local governments relied on land sales for revenue; banks lent aggressively; households treated housing as the primary savings/investment vehicle; and developers like Evergrande scaled massively with high leverage, pre-sales of unfinished homes, and diversification.

Hui, from rural poverty in Henan, founded Evergrande in Shenzhen in 1996 and rode this wave. Aggressive borrowing and expansion made it one of China’s top developers.

He gained political status as a CCP member and long-time member (later Standing Committee) of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top advisory body—signaling official acceptance of “red capitalists.”

Connections with officials and the broader policy environment of loose credit and local-government support were essential; without land access, financing, and regulatory forbearance, the model could not have scaled to hundreds of billions in liabilities.

By the late 2010s, the central government under Xi Jinping realized that the strategy was a losing one - the debt bubble as a systemic risk (“houses are for living in, not speculation”). Liquidity dried up, and the 2021 default followed, exposing ~$300 billion in liabilities, unfinished projects, and losses for homebuyers, banks, and investors.

Authorities blamed “poor management” and “reckless expansion,” but the high-debt model was the making of the Communist Party - not Evergrande. So, they needed to make Evergrande the fall guy for their own mistakes.

There is a strong “fall guy” element. One person at Evergrande did not create a multi-trillion-yuan debt mountain alone; local governments, banks, regulators who looked the other way, and the national growth model all participated. Commentators have noted that the brief trial, guilty plea, and heavy personal focus allow the system to punish a visible tycoon while many enablers stay unexamined. Harsh sentences and full personal-property confiscation also serve deterrence, political signaling (common prosperity, anti-corruption, Party supremacy over capital), and recovery of some value for the state/creditors.

This mirrors other cases of private tycoons (e.g., Jack Ma) who rose with state blessing then faced crackdowns when they grew too large, risky, or independent. The CCP retains ultimate control: it can enable, regulate, criminalize, and reallocate as priorities shift.

In short: the Party-state created the playground and the rules that let Hui build an empire, then changed the rules, prosecuted the excesses (some genuine, some systemic), and took the assets. Hui bears real responsibility for fraud and overreach, but the broader enabling system is not on trial.

The message from Team Trump to our enemies could not be clearer: the era of half-measures and quiet tolerance for those who bankroll Iran is over.

VANCE: “We have to go back to the very beginning. The president said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Well, their nuclear facilities are destroyed, but the question is, do they try to rebuild them? Fundamentally, what we’re trying to do is create a changed reality on the ground where not just we can say with confidence their facilities have been destroyed, but we can also say with confidence they’re never going to try to rebuild.”

Communist China, Turkey, Iraq, and every other nation still providing economic oxygen to the Iranian regime now face a binary choice—stand with the free world or absorb the full weight of American secondary sanctions.

With the Strait of Hormuz under effective U.S. control, the UAE cutting commercial ties, and an “Economic D-Day” already underway, the noose is tightening faster than the regime’s remaining patrons can loosen it. History will record whether the world’s major powers chose wisely. For the rest of us, the evidence is already in: pressure works, isolation works, and the United States is once again willing to use both without apology.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Iran, China's dark fleets, Turkey's energy dependence, Oman's shipping lanes, Evergrande's collapse — it's all one board, and Trump and Bessent are playing it like they know the clock is running toward the midterms and Xi's September visit. Follow the money. Sanctions don't lie, and right now the money is moving away from Iran. God Bless America!

UPDATE 8/21: Communist China is furious at Trump’s secondary sanctions against them for helping Iran. They demand Trump return to the table. This tells me that strangling Iran economically by cutting off China’s ability to “buy” Iranian oil is more harmful to China than any military action short of destroying or seizing all the oil fields in Iran with US troops on the ground.

In fact, it appears that the CCP prefers that Trump continue bombing Iran and exhausting our military supplies while they keep secretly buying Iranian oil and propping up the IRGC. Trump just put a stop to that.

“China rejects Sanctions that have no basis in International Law! China will continue to buy Iranian oil and trade with its BRICS partner!!”

Communist China saves billions of dollars every year by buying heavily discounted Iranian crude oil. If forced to stop, China must buy from the open market, sharply driving up Chinese manufacturing and fuel costs. Applying a 25% penalty on all remaining Chinese goods would severely crush Chinese export profits.

While small Chinese “teapot” refineries are insulated, giant state-owned firms like Sinopec have massive international holdings.

Secondary U.S. sanctions can freeze these large corporations out of global banking networks entirely.

Beijing has actively invoked its own legal tools—such as its anti-foreign sanctions blocking statutes—ordering domestic firms to disregard Washington’s extraterritorial penalties and legally shielding companies from complying with U.S. demands, but that can only go so far. They can’t shield Iran from complete collapse.

The only lifeline that Iran has left is Communist China through the purchase of Iranian oil. These sanctions are designed to stop that completely - not only through the CCP but through “agents” who are secretly moving it to the CCP and operating on behalf of China.

Iran is completely exposed and faces total economic collapse if China stops buying its oil. Because China buys up to 90% of Tehran’s oil exports, Iran has no fallback option if its primary economic lifeline is successfully cut by U.S. pressure

If China is forced to stop buying, the resulting impact on Iran would trigger immediate, bankruptcy, state collapse and proxy collapse.

1. Total Government Bankruptcy

- Loss of Main Revenue: Oil sales fund the vast majority of Iran’s national budget and basic public services.

- Hyperinflation: Cutting off Chinese cash would cause the Iranian rial to tank completely, making everyday goods unaffordable for regular citizens.

- State Collapse: U.S. Treasury officials have explicitly stated the goal of these “historic” sanctions is to completely collapse the Iranian government.

2. Immediate Resource Starvation for Proxies

- Funding Dried Up: Iran relies heavily on its oil revenue to fund its regional military proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) and domestic security forces like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

- Loss of Influence: Without Chinese financial backing, Tehran’s ability to exert power or maintain its regional influence would quickly evaporate.

While China may have the economic size to absorb the pain of a long standoff with America, Iran does not. If Trump and Bessent’s “economic strangulation” plan against Iran successfully shuts down Chinese independent refineries from taking Iranian crude, Iran’s economy will effectively run entirely out of money soon.

Why didn’t Trump play this card earlier? Short answer: he traded the sanctions leverage away for trade-deal leverage and then came back to it.

In June 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that “China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran” — a statement House China Committee Democrats flagged as directly contradicting his own administration’s NSPM-2, which required agencies to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero. That’s the smoking gun for “why not from day one” — he was using the sanctions as a bargaining chip in the broader trade fight, not as a standalone Iran-collapse mechanism.

Al Jazeera reported that going after China’s independent refineries is hard because most have no US financial exposure, but hitting China’s major banks would really sting.

The economic downside of going hard early was real, not just excuse-making. A blanket move against Chinese banks handling Iranian oil payments risks freezing pieces of the global financial system, not just Iranian revenue and it could be very disruptive to the global economy with blowback hitting global oil and shipping markets, including US allies and consumers.

Meaning, too early risked causing a global depression. I remember when Trump told us that himself.

The harsher financial squeeze wasn’t held back on principle, it was held back because it could have blown up trade talks and it risked a systemic financial shock nobody was ready to absorb while Iran still had some four months of pre-blockade export inventory cushioning the blow anyway. Iran is now almost at the end and Trump is now cashing in the chip he was previously holding back for trade leverage. The timing is right.

JAMES THORNE: President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are advancing a strategy more ambitious than conventional sanctions: economic isolation and containment designed to make the Iranian regime financially unviable.

Trump is not a neoconservative. He has no appetite for another invasion, nation-building project, or permanent Middle Eastern occupation. His alternative is to employ American financial power, dollars, capital markets, banking access, insurance, trade finance, and secondary sanctions to impose decisive pressure without committing U.S. forces to another quagmire.

The objective is to isolate not only Iran, but everyone who keeps Iran economically alive. Banks, refiners, shippers, insurers, port operators, commodity traders, payment networks, and foreign governments would face a hard choice: continue servicing Tehran or retain access to the dollar system, American markets, and global capital.

That is the new twist. Iran has survived sanctions for decades through shadow banking, shell companies, reflagged tankers, disguised cargoes, informal payment channels, and oil sales routed through third countries. The Trump-Bessent plan seeks to close those escape valves by targeting the commercial ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into usable hard currency.

The aim is not simply to reduce Iranian GDP. It is to break the regime’s cash cycle. Oil revenue funds imports, subsidies, patronage, internal security, missile programs, and the effort to stabilize the rial. Interrupt that revenue stream, and the effects compound: a weaker currency, higher prices, shortages, lost savings, elite infighting, and public disillusionment.

This is the Trump-Bessent collapse thesis: no invasion, no occupation, no illusion that Washington can install a successor regime. Contain Iran, isolate it financially, punish those who sustain it, and allow the weight of economic failure to expose a regime increasingly unable to pay, protect, or govern. The result will be a global peace dividend.

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