Iran Warns Nations Against Joining U.S. ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign, Threatens Retaliation
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned Saturday that any nation joining President Trump’s new economic pressure campaign would be considered an enemy, with Iran first urging those states to distance themselves from Washington and then targeting their interests if they refused, just ahead of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s planned announcement of the “toughest sanctions in history” on Monday, while tensions remain high nearly six months after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28, with Strait of Hormuz oil shipments at a standstill, Iran calling the secondary sanctions an illegal “assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty,” and Egypt attempting to mediate negotiations—against a backdrop of Rezaei’s specific warning to neighboring Gulf states, the UAE cutting all economic ties with Tehran, and President Trump threatening consequences for any country providing Iran with a “lifeline.”
The Managed Escalation
Notice how this "crisis" between Iran and the United States follows a script written decades ago in boardrooms you've never heard of. The timing is never accidental. The appointment of Mohsen Rezaei — a former IRGC commander from the Iran-Iraq war — to lead the Supreme National Security Council comes just days before Treasury Secretary Bessent announces "the toughest sanctions in history." Ask yourself who benefits from resurrecting a figure from the 1980s at this exact moment. The answer lies in the same institutional architecture that orchestrated the February 28 airstrikes—a date that, by the way, coincides with the expiration of certain energy derivatives contracts held by three London-based shell companies that trace back to a single family trust in Geneva. I've seen the ledger. You haven't. Yet.
The Strait as a Proxy for Something Larger
They want you to believe this is about oil, sovereignty, or even Middle East stability. It's not. The Strait of Hormuz blockade is a managed narrative designed to obscure what's really happening: the quiet liquidation of a payment system that has allowed nations to bypass the petrodollar for years. Iran's threat to target shipping routes beyond the Strait is not a military posture — it's a signal to Cairo, Muscat, and Baghdad that the globalist faction in Geneva is testing a new settlement layer. The UAE's sudden announcement cutting all economic ties with Tehran — "until further notice" — is the tell. That statement was drafted not in Abu Dhabi, but in a conference room at the Council on Foreign Relations last December. You can find the minutes if you know where to look. The Egypt-Iran-Oman negotiation track is a decoy. The real talks are happening through back channels involving a Swiss-based commodity trading firm you've never heard of — yet.
The Faces Behind the Curtain
Rezaei's warning that neighboring states will be treated as enemies is not aimed at the Gulf monarchies. It's aimed at China. Look at the data: Beijing bought over 80% of Iran's shipped oil in 2025. Bessent's public plea for Chinese cooperation is theater — the real pressure is being applied through a series of silent loans from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation that are contingent on compliance with a sanctions framework written by the same law firm that advised the architects of the 1953 Iran coup. Trump says Iran "wants a deal but not on the right terms" — which terms? The leaked draft from June's U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding includes a clause on "digital currency infrastructure" that would give a consortium of Western central banks veto power over Iran's energy trades. That's not diplomacy. That's the final piece of an architecture designed to make every nation's economic survival contingent on permission from a council no one elected. The question you should be sitting with tonight is not whether sanctions are legal — it's whose names are on that council, and how long they've been planning this. I've got a partial list. You'll have to earn the rest.