ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told The Associated Press on Sunday that the Trump administration will sanction another bank this week as part of its campaign to economically isolate Iran, opening a Group of 20 meeting here with a pitch that his counterparts help enforce the squeeze.

The escalation — six months into the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and six days after Bessent's Aug. 25 sanctions package hit nearly 60 entities tied to Iran's oil-evasion networks — arrives against a backdrop of renewed fighting. U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, their first military action in a month.

The Treasury pitch

"This is going to be financial violence if we have to," Bessent said in the interview. "We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop."

Treasury's opening move in the pressure campaign was a proposed rulemaking on Friday that, if finalized, would sever the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt's second-largest bank, from access to the U.S. financial system. Bessent did not name the next target. Stopping short of full sanctions on the Egyptian bank, he said, was a signal, not a retreat.

Bessent said he would raise Iran with his Chinese counterparts at the G20 meeting and that "all options are on the table" for penalizing Beijing, Tehran's biggest trading partner and its leading buyer of oil. He rejected what he called "a completely false narrative that the media picked up on" that his administration is reluctant to confront China, arguing the two countries agree on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and on preventing an Iranian bomb.

The tally so far

Six months in, the war's economic ledger runs in both directions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress in late July that direct U.S. costs had reached $37.5 billion, an estimate Harvard Kennedy School senior lecturer Linda Bilmes told Al Jazeera captures only munitions spent. "My analysis shows that the total budgetary costs will likely reach $1 trillion," Bilmes said. The Pentagon on Aug. 17 signed a $22.9 billion contract with RTX Corporation to ramp up Tomahawk cruise-missile production and has committed $59 billion to Lockheed Martin to triple Patriot interceptor output.

Energy companies have booked windfalls from oil prices lifted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. ExxonMobil reported $14.5 billion in second-quarter profit, its best quarterly earnings in four years. Chevron cleared $12 billion. Saudi Aramco netted $33.4 billion, a one-third increase from 2025. The four largest U.S. banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — reported a combined $42.5 billion in second-quarter profit, each posting double-digit gains.

Airlines and carmakers went the other way. Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, said last week its global sales fell almost 5 percent in July, a sixth straight monthly decline, and has warned the war will cost it $4.3 billion. The International Air Transport Association projects Middle East carriers are on track for a $4.3 billion loss this year after a $7.2 billion profit in 2025.

The hunger line

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week that conflict had turned the world's food supply into "collateral damage." The World Food Programme has estimated that an additional 7.1 million people in Somalia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka are struggling to get sufficient food because of the war. The Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index rose 0.6 percent in July from June to its highest level since January 2023.

The reservation

Bessent's public case is that Washington will use the dollar to end the war. His own conduct so far suggests limits. Friday's filing targets branches of Banque Misr, not the parent. Beijing and New Delhi remain unsanctioned. The administration has, by its own account, mostly relied on warnings rather than new sanctions against Iran's largest trading partners. Iranian and Chinese officials had not publicly responded to Bessent's remarks by press time.

The G20 sessions in Asheville continue through the week. Treasury has not said which bank is next.