U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Iran’s leaders may believe the regime is on the verge of collapse on Thursday under pressure from American sanctions.
Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, Bessent described the effects of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on the Islamic Republic.
“What we have done is created a dollar shortage in the country,” he said. “It came to a swift and, I would say, grand culmination in December, when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank.”
“The central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street,” Bessent said.
The Wall Street Journal reported in January on the role that the collapse of Iran’s Ayandeh Bank played in sparking anti-regime protests across the country in December.
The bank folded in October after losing $5 billion on bad loans to regime-favored projects with backing from Iran’s central bank.
Ayandeh had attracted millions of ordinary Iranian depositors by offering the highest interest rates of any Iranian bank in what one Iranian oversight official described as a “Ponzi scheme.”
Iran’s response to the bank’s failure contributed to the collapse of the rial and sparked massive capital flight.
“We have seen the Iranian leadership wiring money out of the country like crazy,” Bessent told senators on Thursday. “The rats are leaving the ship, and that is a good sign that they know the end may be near.”
