US Treasury Secretary Bessent says his advice regarding Iran and Russia is to “stay away from them,” adding that no one should support the regimes, via a Fox News Interview

• he is in active communication with parties supporting Iran.
• Airlines, maritime shipping and digital-asset entities could face sanctions.
• US will systematically target and remove bad actors linked to Iran and sanctions evasion. Unfortunate that China did not join the other G20 members in backing action on global trade imbalances.

• Unsure whether the US deal for Canada will be that good again.

Treasury commentary of this kind sits in the enforcement-rhetoric phase of the sanctions cycle rather than the announcement phase; episodes of this kind have historically preceded designations by weeks rather than days, and the market read has typically been to fade the rhetoric until actual OFAC listings land. The substance worth noting is the target set: naming airlines, maritime shipping and digital-asset entities is the secondary-sanctions playbook applied to the evasion chain rather than to producers directly, and in past enforcement waves it has been freight, insurance and shadow-fleet capacity, rather than headline export volumes, that repriced first. The transmission channel on crude is the discount at which sanctioned barrels clear and the cost of moving them, not an immediate supply loss; enforcement that sticks tends to widen that discount and tighten effective supply into Asia at the margin. The active-communication line signals private pressure on third-country intermediaries, which is where these campaigns have historically succeeded or failed. The Canada aside is trade-posture noise rather than sanctions content, but it fits the pattern of linking energy and trade leverage in the same messaging. The follow-ons that matter are designations, vessel-level actions, and any move against the financial rails rather than further interview rhetoric.