Iran’s leaders moving their wealth abroad ahead of possible collapse – US Treasury Secretary

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says America has tracked major flight of Iranian leadership’s capital out of the country, suggesting Tehran is increasingly concerned internal and external threats could collapse the regime.

By World Israel News Staff

The United States has tracked a massive movement of capital from Iran in recent weeks, a senior Trump administration official said, as the Iranian economy approaches “a total financial collapse.”

On Wednesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke with Newsmax about the flurry of money transfers out of Iran over the past month, which Bessent said pointed to growing insecurity among the regime’s ruling class about the government’s chances of surviving internal and external pressure.

“We are now seeing the rats fleeing the ship because we can see millions, tens of millions of dollars being wired out of the country, snuck out of the country by the Iranian leadership,” Bessent said.

Iran’s leaders are, Bessent added, “abandoning ship, and we are seeing it come into banks and financial institutions all over the world.”

A report by Israel’s Channel 14 on Wednesday suggested the scope of the money transfers out of Iran is even larger than claimed by Bessent, with some $1.5 billion wired to escrow accounts in Dubai over a two-day period.

The report claimed most of the money was transferred via cryptocurrency accounts.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the chosen successor to lead Iran, is said to have personally transferred $328 million to accounts in Dubai recently.

While the nationwide unrest and threat of American airstrikes have increased concerns among Iran’s leadership, accelerating the pace of money transfers, Bessent said the flight of Iranian capital began before the protests started in late December.

Bessent credited the restoration of sanctions on Iran by President Donald Trump at the beginning of his second term as being largely responsible for the “total financial collapse of the regime” now under way.

“What is going on in Iran is the culmination…the endgame of President Trump’s plan that was put into effect almost immediately when he came into office.”

“We have been applying a maximum pressure campaign on Iran’s oil exports, to cut off the sources of the regime’s funding. And what we have seen in the past month is the total financial collapse of the regime. We are seeing banks go out of business, we are seeing inflation, we are seeing a lack of hard currency in the economy.”