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“You know who you are.” China and Russia know who they are. Every country that has been quietly processing Iranian oil, handling Iranian financial transfers, or providing Tehran the economic oxygen it needs to keep functioning knows who they are. The warning is not ambiguous. The consequences will not be ambiguous either.
Scott Bessent has been laying the groundwork for this escalation for weeks, promising measures “never seen before.” The infrastructure — new sanctions frameworks, third-party penalty mechanisms, financial isolation tools built through months of Treasury work — was being assembled while the military campaign degraded Iran’s physical capacity to fight back.
Now both hammers drop simultaneously. Military degradation and economic strangulation, applied together, against a regime that is already hanging by a thread by Trump’s own description.
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