Mike Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s economic operation “is devastating the Iranian economy”, claiming that the Iranian side keeps coming to the negotiating table asking for cash, Al Jazeera reports.

“When Iran is coming to the table with our negotiators, they are talking about cash, cash, cash. Because they’ll absorb the bombings,” Waltz said in an interview with Fox News. “I say this jokingly but seriously as well – the Iranians are more afraid of Secretary Bessent than they are of [Defence] Secretary Hegseth right now.”

The US envoy claimed that Iranian leaders “don’t care about” their military or the Iranian people. Instead, they mainly care that “their currency is tanking” and that “inflation is the highest [it has been] in 80 years”, he said.

“They are constantly asking for access to cash, access to their assets that we have frozen … that’s the squeeze. That, coupled with the blockade, that’s what’s going to eventually get the Iranians to move.”