The latest Treasury action to squeeze the regime in Tehran travels via a financial institution located within a NATO ally and exposes the China problem inside Washington’s attempt to cut off Iranian oil money. Treasury sanctioned a Turkey-based bank on Friday over alleged Iranian financial flows, reaching into an allied nation while leaving the harder target—Chinese demand for Iranian oil—outside the day’s enforcement action. Treasury said OFAC designated Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi and two subsidiaries, saying the bank facilitated tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the IRGC-QF and gave Iran correspondent-banking access.
The department also said Golden Global was established to transfer Iranian oil revenues from China to Turkey, where money exchangers could convert them into cash and gold. Bessent framed the action as part of Operation Economic Outcast, an August 24 campaign he said would “block every potential source of revenue” for Iran. On Friday, he said financial institutions would “find out the hard way” that Washington was serious.
The target was Turkey-based, a sensitive choice because of Ankara's membership in NATO and President Donald Trump's own warm relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Yet Treasury’s account of the violation points well beyond Turkey and much further east: the money entered the network as oil revenue from China. The timing suggests one reason Beijing may have dodged Bessent’s economic bullet.
The White House said in May that Trump would welcome Xi Jinping in Washington this fall, reciprocating his own visit to Beijing. Xi is expected in late September. reported Friday, citing two unnamed sources, that Xi was preparing an unusually large business delegation for the September 24 summit, adding a commercial test to the diplomatic one. The Trump administration had already sanctioned China- and Hong Kong-linked intermediaries, shipping companies and independent “teapot” refineries, but had stopped short of targeting a major Chinese bank.
Bessent has rejected the idea that Washington was reluctant to confront China as a “completely false narrative". But hitting China would come at an economic cost that the Trump administration is perhaps not willing to induce, at least not right now. Targeting a major Chinese bank before Xi's visit could trigger retaliation and complicate the summit.
Bessent denies Washington is reluctant to confront China, although his own rhetorical question—“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”—captures the risk. The U.S. has arrived at a fragile truce with China in a trade war that spread volatility across the financial markets and caused severe pain for importers and exporters on both sides of the Pacific. Xi's visit is intended to firm up that truce and move the relationship into a new phase, an effort that Iran sanctions would disrupt, perhaps fatally.
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