… the goal was to “collapse [Iran’s] already buckling economy” and “make Iran broke again” by targeting its oil sales and efforts to get around US sanctions.
“Making Iran Broke Again will mark the beginning of our updated sanctions policy. Watch this space. If economic security is national security, the regime in Tehran will have neither,” Bessent said at the time.
A day before his speech at the Economic Club, Bessent met with Israeli Foreign Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the main proponents of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the Israeli official in charge of expanding illegal Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Trump’s sanctions were not responsible. Biden’s were. This is a long game that Trump is trying to take credit for.
Also, Iran is just mismanaged in general, so the pushes from the sanctions just exacerbated problems. For instance, they are running out of water.