Today's Lianhe Zaobao reports: "U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the United States is preparing to further pressure Iran with unprecedented economic measures, but critics remain skeptical given that Iran is already subject to maritime blockades and thousands of sanctions."
The U.S. Treasury has threatened to impose unprecedented blockade measures to pressure Iran, but this strategy faces numerous constraints. For years, Iran has been building a shadow fleet and diversifying its financial intermediation channels, enabling it to adapt to successive rounds of sanctions and making it difficult to completely cut off all foreign trade routes; even more critical is the contradiction that if the U.S. heavily targets Chinese financial institutions involved in Iran's oil trade, it would directly disrupt the momentum of Sino-U.S. communication, while fully restricting the flow of Iranian crude oil would drive up international oil prices, thereby exacerbating inflationary pressures domestically in the United States. Facing multiple risks, the international community generally questions the practical effectiveness of the U.S.'s new round of sanctions—this extreme pressure campaign appears largely as a form of public deterrence, and relying solely on economic means to force Iran to alter its strategic stance proves extremely difficult.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1873648270507017/
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