Iran live updates: 'We're going to hit them hard,' Trump says after Iranian strikes

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iran is taking the economic sanctions the U.S. threatened "seriously," and he blamed the recent renewed strikes on the economic pressure from the U.S

“They're taking them very seriously,” Bessent said. “If you look back, what the Iranian political leadership has said over the past 10 days, they're in shock at the state of their economy, and you know, we are seeing gas lines -- could you imagine a country in the world with the third largest amount of energy resources has to import gasolines, and they now have three, four-hour gas lines that go through the night? So I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically.”

Asked whether the sanctions could slow American growth and whether the actions against Iran are creating global economic uncertainty, Bessent said no.

"The U.S. growth is quite strong, and global growth, we will get to the other side of this Iran conflict, and the world will be better for that,” Bessent said. “And in terms of certainty, we have we have the tariff deals with the countries, and we are seeing quite strong global growth. We believe that the countries need to take substantial deregulation, energy security, which the Iran conflict has highlighted.”