Iran War Impasse

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. So maybe you've heard that President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson have declared today Economic D-Day. That's if Iran doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz and maybe do other things in the way the US wants. Separately, the US bond market had kind of an Economic D-Day of its own last week, if you were paying attention, after the federal government's overall debt hit $40 trillion.
So we'll talk in our first two segments today about the war and what this Economic D-Day today is supposed to be, and then about the debt and the bond market. But weirdly, and you got to admit this is weird no matter your politics, I think, here's an exchange between President Trump and a reporter the other day as she asks what Trump will do if the US economic strategy to buy back some US Treasury debt doesn't come the markets.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:07)
We have many types of intervention, that's one, the ultimate intervention is our military and if we have to use that we will, yeah.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:22)
Send in the military to address the national debt? Okay then, we'll get to that with economic reporter Greg David later in the hour, but first the war.
President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant have declared today Economic D-Day, that's if Iran doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz and maybe do other things in the way the US wants. Besant is holding a news conference today to detail what that will allegedly mean for Iran and for any country doing business with Iran, US allies included. Here is Besant previewing it a little bit last week on CNBC.

**Scott Besant** (1:59)
We do have control of the Strait. You would have seen media reports that large amounts of energy are getting out and I think that we can continue doing that in the southern lane and that I think oil markets are misinterpreting what this economic pressure means. The economic pressure means that we are going to all of our allies and this is going to be the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world and we are going to them and saying you are either with us or against us. You want this murderous regime to end and if you insist on they are doing business with them, either transferring money, buying their oil, they are doing seaborne ship transfers, then the US. Treasury and the US. Government, they will put its full might and force toward enforcing against you.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:56)
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on CNBC.
With me now is Yeganeh Torbati, covering the war and the region from Istanbul for the New York Times and co-author of Stolen Revolution, Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran, just published in June. Yeganeh, thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

**Yeganeh Torbati** (3:18)
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:20)
You heard the Scott Besant clip. What else can you tell us so far about what they mean by economic D-Day?

**Yeganeh Torbati** (3:28)
Well, I think we're all very curious to see what the US is going to announce. But it is interesting to me. I mean, from what he said, it seems that the goal is now again, some sort of regime change. For a while, the US has been hoping to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened, but it seems like again, we're looking at more expansive goals, at least according to what Secretary Besant said in that clip.
I think the thing that I'll be looking out the most for is, what does this mean for China and will these measures be enforced against China? President Donald Trump has tried to pursue a pretty good relationship with the Chinese government. But it is China that buys or bought, I guess, before the Naval Blockade, the vast majority of Iran's oil, even despite US sanctions. It was done through these underhanded ways, and it wasn't kind of officially on the books. But that is kind of what the reporting tells us, is that Chinese refineries had been buying that Iranian oil. And so is that going to be stopped by the US, or is the US going to be trying to punish China for that? I'll be very curious to see kind of if President Trump sort of wants to make his relationship with the Chinese government more difficult over the Iran issue.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:49)
Yeah, but some of the listeners may think, okay, China, they're kind of an adversary anyway. But you heard the clip. It sounds like Besant and Trump plan to inflict economic pain not just on China but also on US allies who get oil or do other business with Iran. Do you have a sense of who that might affect?