America can bankrupt Iran’s insiders — And it should

Excerpt

Tens of billions of dollars have been siphoned out of the Iranian economy by the Islamic Republic’s insiders over the past decade. If the U.S. wasn’t watching then, it is now.

“We now know where the Iranian leadership bank accounts are, and those are being frozen,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday.

His message is the right one: America can bankrupt Iran’s elite, undermining their loyalty to Mojtaba Khamenei and his cronies. But knowing where the money is going is not the same as recovering it. Fortunately, the United States has dealt with this problem before.

Max Meizlish is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). He previously served in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Susan Soh is a research associate at FDD.