Scott Bessent: This is coming to a STOP

Larry, good to be with you. And to be clear, the president gave the order for the maximum pressure campaign more than a year ago. He gave it to me and Treasury last March. It was that pressure that brought the Iranian economy to a standstill in December that led to the protest, the largest in Iran, collapsed. The central bank had to monetize the debt, and that created massive inflation. Their currency is down about 60 or 70% versus the U.S. dollar, so they're in the middle of a currency crisis. And what we're doing now is, you know, we've been in a long race, and we are sprinting for the finish line. President Trump told me three weeks ago to up the pressure again, and we have gone to buyers of Iranian oil and told them that we are going to—we are willing to do secondary sanctions on your industries, on your banks who tolerate Iranian oil in their system. One of the big mistakes out of many that the Iranian leadership made was bombing their GCC counterparts because for years we had heard that there was no IRGC money in their bank accounts. Now they've become more transparent. And we are freezing those bank accounts for the Iranian people. And we can see that every day it is more pressure on the regime. The retirement funds they thought that they had outside of Iran, we are freezing. We're holding those for the Iranian people. Same with all their villas in the south of France and all over the world. We are going to track them down, and we are going to continue the economic pressure as well as the block on the Strait of Hormuz.

That's right, Larry. We were able to grab about $350 million of crypto assets, and then on top of another 100 that we had recently gotten. So we're almost at half a billion there. And we are freezing bank accounts everywhere. More importantly, we are making people less willing to deal with the regime. And then so it's the economic fury along with the blockade, because now the port at Kharg Island is at a virtual standstill in terms of loadings. We think that the Iranian storage will be full soon. They'll have to start capping in their wells which will lead to permanent problems. And, you know, again, the regime won't be able to pay their soldiers. And equally important, Larry, is they won't be able to fund their proxies whether it's Hezbollah, Hamas around the world. One of President Trump's goals in this was to stop Iran's ability to project terrorist power around the world. Iran was the largest sponsor of state terrorism around the world. They've been killing Americans for the past 47 years, and that's coming to a stop now.

Larry, we have the most resilient economy in the world thanks to President Trump's initiatives both in his first term and second term. We are an energy superpower. We have never exported as much energy. The crude prices are up, natural gas prices are actually down since February 27th, which is very important. And both the market, the stock market's looking through this. And while sentiment has come down a bit, consumers are looking through it too by their actions in terms of retail spending. We're in constant touch with the banks, and the consumers of all quintiles of the income level are still doing well. We had one of the American carmakers in today, and we were told that sales of trucks, they are still going very well. And to your point too, Larry, the Democrats said we were going to have a terrible tax season, and it couldn't have been more opposite. We had the best tax filing season we've ever had, and if I were a Democrat, I'd be worried because 45% of the returns that we received contained at least one of the president's four signature policies: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reduced taxes on social security for our seniors, and the deductibility of auto loans if you buy an American car. So the refunds were very large, and because of Frank Bisignano who's taken over as CEO at the IRS, the average tax refund went out in 21 days if you filed electronically.