Russian analyst warns US financial threats against Iran's partners risk dollar

Threatening to cut countries that trade with Iran out of the global financial system would damage confidence in the US dollar, particularly given the exposure of China and Oman, Russian economist Ksenia Bondarenko said, Vesti reported on August 26.

The comments respond to a US pressure campaign under which President Donald Trump has threatened penalties on any country that keeps providing Iran with what he calls an economic lifeline, part of a drive Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described as the economic asphyxiation of Iran. Bondarenko, associate professor in the department of world economy at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, framed the potential exclusion of Iran's trading partners from the SWIFT messaging system as a self-inflicted risk for Washington.

Cutting any country out of SWIFT would significantly reduce investor confidence, Bondarenko said.

She argued that because China is the main importer of Iranian goods and Oman acts as an intermediary, disconnecting either from the global system would carry serious geopolitical, economic and institutional consequences, starting with a loss of investor confidence she said had already been eroded by the freezing of Russian assets, tariff wars and sanctions pressure.

Trump has not named SWIFT specifically in the current campaign. On Truth Social he warned that any country allowing its financial institutions, businesses, airports or government entities to provide a lifeline to Iran would face "tremendous costs," while Bessent said the US would expel from its financial system any group helping Iran launder money and flagged a major sanctions move against an unnamed financial institution.

Western analysts have named China, India, Turkey, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates as the countries most exposed to potential US action. Bessent declined to say whether Washington was willing to sanction Chinese banks, a step that would risk a sharp escalation with Beijing, Iran's largest trading partner.