WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was recently forced to relocate to a military base over concerns for his safety.
The move comes as Bessent has spent the last several months executing a massive economic campaign against Iran aimed at severing all of Tehran’s remaining financial ties around the world.
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the relocation was partly due to media reports that helped identify Bessent’s home address. The relocation was earlier reported by The New York Times.
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Recent U.S. intelligence showed that Iran has stepped up efforts to target American personnel in the Middle East and elsewhere, which contributed to the State Department last month reducing staffing at four U.S. embassies in the region.
President Donald Trump said this week that the more than 8-month-old Iran war “militarily is effectively over,” but his administration has kept up the financial warfare in a bid to get Iran to capitulate to U.S. demands over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The Treasury Department in August pledged an “economic D-Day” against Tehran, and it has become a massive sanctions and influence campaign.
U.S. officials have spent the past few months traveling from Europe to the Middle East and meeting behind closed doors on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to make the case to some of Tehran’s closest and most vital trading partners: Sever those financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.
And it appears some have followed suit. The United Arab Emirates and Turkey — key trading partners and regional neighbors — halted Iran’s top commercial bank from issuing transactions in their countries, while some of the country’s top airlines were cut off from critical regional routes from Istanbul to Muscat, Oman.
Other top Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also live on military bases.
