US President Trump says US will hit Iran hard economically, reports Fox News

Threats of economic pressure on Iran from a US president have a well-worn precedent: the sequence has historically run from rhetoric to designation of entities and banks to secondary-sanctions enforcement against third-country buyers, with the material channel for oil being how tightly enforcement bites on Iranian crude exports rather than the announcement itself. Past episodes of sanctions escalation on Tehran have tended to tighten prompt crude balances and lift freight and insurance costs on Gulf loadings, with the curve response concentrated in nearby spreads rather than flat price alone, though leakage through discounted flows to Asia has repeatedly blunted the headline over time. The relevant distinction is between sanctions language aimed at negotiation leverage and measures actually drafted and enforced; only the latter has durably removed barrels. Fox-sourced presidential remarks are typically preliminary, so the follow-ons that matter are formal action from Treasury or State, any accompanying posture on the nuclear file, and the Gulf security read-through for shipping through Hormuz. As rhetoric rather than implemented policy, the signal is directional at this stage.