On Wednesday, June 3, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that due to pressure from the United States, Iran’s inflation rate may exceed 200%, with the government being unable to pay salaries to over 50% of military personnel and police not fulfilling their duties.
Scott Bessent attended a budget hearing of the US Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. He said, “We have a diligent and highly dedicated team who have done an excellent job in understanding the operations of the black market in Iran, as well as the global flow of Iranian oil and energy.”
He continued, “We have frozen and seized relevant (Iranian) assets; we have dealt a severe blow to the Iranian economy and its war machine. We estimate that Iran’s current inflation rate may have exceeded 200%.”
The US Treasury Secretary concluded by stating, “Their monetary system has collapsed. We are confident that over 50% of military personnel in Iran are not receiving their salaries, and police are not fulfilling their duties as required.”
During the hearing, he elaborated on the various measures taken by the Treasury Department to restrain Iran’s “shadow fleet” and its transportation of Iranian oil activities.
“We initiated the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign in March 2025. Since then, we have continued with this strategy. About seven to eight weeks ago, the President instructed me to escalate the pressure to the highest level,” said Bessent.
“We named it ‘Operation Economic Fury.’ One of the many mistakes made by the Iranian regime was using missiles to attack neighboring Gulf countries. We have good cooperation partners in the Gulf region, but many of these countries were initially not fully transparent with us about what may or may not be happening within the banking systems,” he said.
“Now, we have achieved a higher level of transparency. We have uncovered a significant amount of encrypted assets and imposed sanctions on relevant ships – in fact, the US Navy has physically seized some ships. Currently, we are continuing to track the flow of funds [primarily targeting funds of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran] and freezing these funds, to one day return them to the Iranian people,” concluded Bessent.