Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Iran’s final oil shipments will clear within two weeks, leaving the regime with nothing to trade and desperate for a deal.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that Iran is nearly out of oil to sell, and that the squeeze is forcing Tehran toward negotiations on American terms. He said the last cargoes still afloat will reach China soon, after which the Islamic Republic will have an empty ledger.
Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Bessent put a hard clock on the remaining exports and tied that timeline directly to pressure already building on the regime. He stated the numbers without hedging.
"I am confident, given that there’s only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water, that Iran will have nothing left to trade for anything,"
Bessent went further on the delivery window and what comes after the last tanker unloads.
"Probably within the next two weeks, they are going to make their final deliveries of oil to China, and then they will have nothing,"
He called the remaining stock “an empty set” and said the regime already feels the squeeze. That is why, in his view, Iranian officials are suddenly interested in a deal.
"It is an empty set. And I believe that they are feeling the pressure here, and that’s why they want a deal."
The pressure did not appear overnight. After a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran collapsed in July, the United States put a sweeping blockade in place that cuts vessels off from entering or leaving Iranian ports. That blockade has stayed in force ever since.
Last month Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, a sharper push aimed at foreign countries and companies still doing business with Tehran. The goal is isolation, not a temporary slowdown.
Bessent described the result in plain terms: Iran is cut off from normal commerce and treated as a pariah. He said his job is to lock in compliance if any new agreement is reached, because the last one did not hold.
"They are isolated from the world,"
He continued:
"They are a pariah state. And my job is to make sure that, when they come with a deal, that they want to stick to it. They did not stick to the MOU."
On the next round, he left the decision to the president and framed the leverage as decisive.
"Next time, if there is a deal, and that’s at President Trump’s discretion, they will stick to it, because they are on their knees."
That same hard line has defined the administration’s broader financial campaign, including earlier moves Bessent cast as an economic D-Day against the regime’s remaining lifelines.
Last week, top Iranian officials floated a seven-day ceasefire proposal. The offer was straightforward on paper: open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States unfreezing roughly $12 billion in assets, lifting the blockade, and easing sanctions.
President Trump rejected it. He told reporters the proposal was not acceptable. The administration has not traded the blockade for short-term access promises after the earlier memorandum fell apart.
That rejection fits a pattern already visible in how Trump has handled Tehran’s recent bids, including when he dismissed Iran’s seven-day Hormuz deal and kept military options on the table.
Iran had also pushed a parallel cease-fire track that the White House turned aside, consistent with reports that Trump turned down Iran’s seven-day cease-fire bid rather than unlock frozen funds on Tehran’s schedule.
The Strait of Hormuz remains a central chokepoint. Nearly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil supplies once moved through it each year. Iran’s sporadic attacks on vessels have disrupted traffic there since early March.
Bessent said the straits themselves are open now. He reported current flows averaging 15 to 22 million barrels a day, compared with about 20 million barrels a day before the conflict. The Trump administration says U.S. military escorts are moving ships along a route close to the shores of Oman.
"The straits are open,"
He added the volume figures in the same appearance:
"We’re averaging now 15 to 22 million barrels a day... It was at about 20 [million] pre-conflict."
Those numbers matter because they separate global transit from Iran’s own export pipe. Transit can continue under escort while Iranian barrels still on the water run out. Once the last 15 million barrels reach China, Bessent’s claim is that Tehran has nothing left to sell.
Washington has paired that export squeeze with a public demand for isolation. Trump used his UN platform to press the same theme, calling for Iran’s economic quarantine in the same address where he demanded Iran’s isolation before the world body.
Bessent’s message was not that talks are impossible. It was that any future deal sits at President Trump’s discretion, and that enforcement comes first. The collapsed July memorandum is the reference point. Iran walked away from that understanding. The blockade and Operation Economic Outcast followed.
With final oil deliveries to China expected inside two weeks, the Treasury secretary says the regime will face an empty set of trade goods. He links that shortage directly to the sudden interest in a bargain. The United States, in this account, holds the leverage and will not unlock it for a short ceasefire that leaves the core problem intact.
The sequence is clear from the administration’s own timeline: memorandum collapse in July, blockade since then, Economic Outcast last month, rejected seven-day Hormuz trade last week, and a two-week clock on the last Iranian oil still floating. Bessent’s assessment is that desperation follows the empty tanks.
Maximum pressure only works when it is real, measured, and kept in place until the other side has no other choice.
