Hemmati says US economic pressure on Iran backfired politically

Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, said on Wednesday that US efforts to undermine Iran's economy and bring about its collapse within two weeks had instead resulted in the Republican Party being politically sidelined in the US Congress. His remarks were published after the Republican Party's defeat, according to Mehr News Agency (MNA).

Hemmati referred to a series of statements by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the account, Bessent said on February 14, 2026, that Iran would face a severe economic crisis if its oil exports were reduced to 100,000 barrels per day. In mid-September, Bessent also said, "We are going to bring Iran to its knees economically." On October 27, he predicted that Iran's economy would collapse within two weeks. The following day, he published an image referring to a target exchange rate of 300,000 tomans per US dollar in Iran.

Hemmati said that one month after the Central Bank launched its foreign exchange intervention in the banknote market, experts were now in a better position to assess the policy's impact on the currency market. He did not provide further details on the intervention's results in the published remarks.

The comments place the exchange-rate policy and the US sanctions pressure campaign in the same frame, with Hemmati presenting the central bank's market intervention as a subject for expert evaluation while characterizing the US Treasury's stated goals as having produced political rather than economic results in Washington. The report by Mehr News Agency (MNA) carried the remarks without additional comment.