Nournews: One week before U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled what he called an “economic exclusion operation” on September 2 amid extensive media attention, a closed-door meeting was held at an FDD building in Washington, bringing together several influential figures involved in sanctions policy and Iran affairs.
The meeting was not public. Attendance was limited, and the discussion was not focused on introducing a new sanctions package, but rather on examining a scenario intended to bring the “unfinished business” of economic pressure on Iran to its conclusion. Among those reportedly present were controversial figures such as Richard Nephew, one of the architects of sanctions against Iran; Mark Dubowitz, a prominent figure known for his alleged Nazi-Zionist leanings; James Bacon, a senior adviser to Bessent; and several media activists.
Details of the private meeting that have leaked and were obtained by Nournews paint a different picture from the media campaign that followed days later. The account reveals, on the one hand, the excessive optimism of the architects of economic pressure and, on the other, the reservations of individuals who themselves have spent years helping design the sanctions regime against Iran. Perhaps the most significant takeaway from the meeting was that even at the heart of Washington’s think-tank establishment, there was no consensus over the effectiveness of “economic exclusion.”
From Military Failure to Dollar Warfare
The meeting was dominated from the outset by one issue: Donald Trump’s deep dissatisfaction with the outcome of the previous military operation against Iran.
According to reliable information, between May and July, Trump reprimanded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at least five times during Cabinet meetings, reportedly blaming him for the failure of the operation known as “Epic Fury.” There were even reports that on July 14, during a meeting attended by Rubio, Cooper, Bessent and Vance, Trump’s confrontation with the defense secretary became so intense that the vice president was forced to intervene.
Rubio reportedly managed to persuade Trump to keep Hegseth in the Cabinet while simultaneously proposing an alternative strategy on the economic front.
It was against this backdrop that a sentence attributed to Scott Bessent became a central point of discussion at the FDD meeting: “Now it’s my turn and my colleagues’ to finish what Peter started.”
The implication was clear to those present: if military operations had failed to achieve the White House’s objectives, the battlefield would have to shift to the economic and financial arena. In the eyes of the architects of the strategy, the dollar was supposed to accomplish what bombs and missiles had failed to do.
That shift in strategy was formally unveiled days later under the label of an “economic exclusion operation.” Before its practical implementation, however, it was accompanied by an extensive media campaign designed to generate a psychological shock in Iran’s markets and society even before the economic pressure took effect.
But the most striking part of the meeting was not the strategic shift itself, but the promises made about its results.
James Bacon, a senior Treasury adviser, cited what he described as “detailed economic and social models of Iran” to present a picture of the country’s economy collapsing almost overnight.
Based on his assessment of behavioral patterns and social developments in Iran over the previous five years, as well as commitments from the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with the United States, the rial would suffer an unprecedented collapse within the first 24 hours, with the dollar reaching an unprecedented 480,000 tomans.
During the following 24 hours, he predicted, serious protests and riots would erupt in 23 locations across Iran. By the end of the 72-hour period, the country would enter a state of emergency.
Dubowitz, meanwhile, cited Iranian figures such as Behnam Taleblu and Saeed Ghasseminejad, claiming that more than half of Tehran’s gas stations were already closed, while queues stretching for three kilometers had formed outside the remaining stations.
The basic premise of the analysis was that Iran’s economy had reached a point where only one final shock was needed to trigger its collapse.
The predictions were delivered with such confidence that the outcome of the operation appeared to be treated as a foregone conclusion. But not everyone in the room shared that assessment.
A Rift Inside Washington’s Think-Tank Establishment
Richard Nephew, who for years was one of the U.S. government’s leading experts on sanctions against Iran, approached the discussion from almost the opposite direction.
In a pointed warning to James Bacon, he cautioned against promising the U.S. president “immediate results.” In his view, years of living under sanctions had turned Iran into a “hard-to-kill” country, diminishing the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool compared with the past.
Nephew argued that the U.S. sanctions “toolbox” was nearly empty because virtually every major sector of Iran’s economy had already been targeted by sanctions for years, and the new operation would not add anything fundamentally different to the existing pressure campaign.
The market might react, he acknowledged, but predicting a twofold collapse in the value of Iran’s national currency or the realization of a 72-hour collapse scenario was, in his view, more a political and propaganda estimate than an economic assessment.
The disagreement exposed a significant divide: between those who viewed sanctions as a tool for creating expectations of collapse and those who believed that the repeated use of the same instrument had gradually eroded its deterrent power.
The disagreement also surfaced over another issue: the quality of the intelligence being used to inform policy decisions on Iran.
Interestingly, even some participants in the meeting expressed doubts about certain reports, noting that some of the same sources had previously circulated accounts that later proved exaggerated or inaccurate.
This raised a fundamental question: Is U.S. policy toward Iran based on conditions on the ground, or on reports that sometimes reflect political wishful thinking more than reality?
The Battle Over “Selling Wishful Thinking”
By the end of the meeting, the discussion had shifted from sanctions to a broader dispute over the Foundation for Defense of Democracies itself.
One of the journalists present directly challenged the think tank’s record, arguing that its fundamental problem was that it had spent years presenting U.S. policymakers with an exaggerated picture of Iranian society.
According to this account, the Washington Post journalist argued that at various points, predictions of the imminent collapse of the Islamic Republic, majority support in Iran for foreign intervention, or the outbreak of nationwide unrest had been based on reports that subsequently proved to be far removed from realities on the ground.
The journalist warned that if U.S. policymakers continued to base their assessments on such narratives, Washington would once again find itself facing a deep gap between its expectations and the reality of Iran.
The atmosphere became increasingly tense as these questions were raised, and the discussion eventually veered into personal allegations concerning Bessent and Dubowitz’s alleged sexual orientations and their purported romantic relationships with some Iranian monarchist figures living abroad.
But the significance of the meeting lies not in those personal exchanges. It lies in the divide that emerged over a more fundamental question: Is the FDD producing analysis—or selling wishful thinking?
When the leaked account of the meeting is considered alongside the official unveiling of the “economic exclusion operation,” one conclusion stands out.
The strategy was not simply a new package of sanctions. It was based on the assumption that psychological warfare would be an integral component of economic warfare.
The objective was not merely to restrict Iran’s financial resources. Creating expectations of collapse, triggering panic in the foreign-exchange market, and altering economic behavior within Iranian society were also part of the operation’s design.
Yet the very meeting intended to serve as a final round of coordination for the strategy revealed that even among its American architects, there was no agreement on a fundamental question:
Is Iran’s economy and society genuinely on the verge of collapse, or is Washington once again making decisions based on a picture shaped more by think tanks than by realities on the ground?
That was the major—and deeply unsettling—question raised by some of the journalists present, particularly the Washington Post reporter.
At the end of the meeting, the journalist reportedly said:
“I said at the Washington Post editorial board, where Fareed Zakaria and Vali Nasr were also guests, that as long as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is the source of U.S. policymaking on Iran, we will keep heading in the wrong direction. I’m repeating the same thing here today.”
Nournews