Trump said there are ‘a lot of military defections in Iran.’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on March 19 that the United States is moving to seize funds transferred abroad by Iranian defectors, as the ongoing conflict with Iran enters its third week.
Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Bessent said defections were occurring across multiple levels of the Iranian government and military.
“So we are seeing the defections at all levels as they’re starting to sense what’s going on with the regime. It doesn’t get reported here in the U.S. very well, but we are trouncing them from the air, and the regime will probably collapse within itself,” Bessent said.
“At Treasury, we’ve seen where they wire their money out of the country,” he continued. “We’re coming for that. We’re going to get it back to the Iranian people.”
Trump said there are “a lot of military defections in Iran.”
The defections come as the war with Iran has lasted for 19 days, just months removed from protests in Iran from citizens looking to topple the regime. A clampdown on the protests led to the deaths of 32,000 Iranians at the hands of the government, according to Trump. Iran on Thursday conducted its first executions tied to the January protests.
Separately, Bessent indicated that the United States may ease certain sanctions on Iranian oil to stabilize global energy prices.
“In the coming days, we may allow previously sanctioned Iranian oil—currently stranded at sea—to enter the market,” Bessent said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.” He estimated the volume at roughly 140 million barrels, equivalent to about 10 to 14 days of global supply.
Oil prices have remained above $100 per barrel in recent weeks, driven in part by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on commercial tankers.
Bessent noted that a similar approach was recently taken with Russian oil, when the United States permitted the sale of shipments stranded at sea, adding approximately 130 million barrels to global supply.
