Scott Bessent
US Treasury Secretary under Trump; enforces sanctions across Iran, Russia and Cuba.
Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, issued OFAC FAQ 1262 on 13 July 2026, granting Cuban firms GECOMEX and GEMAR a 30-day wind-down to 12 August while leaving the newly designated tourism ministry MINTUR without any published compliance guidance.
Last refreshed: 14 August 2026 · Appears in 4 active topics
Is Scott Bessent building a financial siege of Iran, or just escalating pressure to a negotiating table?
Timeline for Scott Bessent
Promised unprecedented isolation measures the day before this designation was issued
Iran Conflict 2026: Iran sanctions the register can't findPromised unprecedented new economic-isolation measures against Iran
Iran Conflict 2026: Bessent vows measures, names no targetReceived the letter urging CSMC sanctions
Cuba Dispatch: Florida four target the medical missionsMentioned in: Qatar says the $6bn never left
Iran Conflict 2026Received Altman's equity-stake pitch
AI: Jobs, Power & Money: OpenAI offers US a 5% stake, $42.6bnBackground
Scott Bessent is the 60th US Secretary of the Treasury, confirmed by the Senate in January 2025. A veteran macro investor, he spent nearly two decades at George Soros's hedge fund before founding Key Square Group in 2015. His appointment signalled that Trump's second term would treat fiscal and sanctions policy as active geopolitical instruments rather than passive regulatory tools, and he has since driven the administration's sanctions strategy across Iran, Russia and Cuba from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Bessent's approach has repeatedly paired public rhetoric with administrative asymmetry: extending one country's sanctions relief on the same day another's lapses, or threatening intermediaries such as Oman alongside the primary target. That pattern has drawn criticism from European allies, including Germany, over Russian oil waivers, and from Ukraine, which called the relaxations a betrayal of the sanctions architecture it depends on.
His REMIT now extends beyond sanctions: the April 2026 Wall Street summit over a frontier AI model's capabilities marked Treasury's first formal move into AI systemic-risk oversight, alongside the Federal Reserve.
The financial squeeze keeps tightening
Bessent confirmed on 15 April 2026 that OFAC General Licence U, covering roughly 325 tankers carrying an estimated $31.5 billion in Iranian crude oil, would not be renewed at its 19 April expiry, and described secondary sanctions on Iranian oil buyers as 'the financial equivalent of the US military's bombing campaign'. Brent did not reprice on the announcement.
On 22 June his OFAC issued General Licence X, the conflict's first Iran oil-sanctions relief instrument, running to 21 August. Two days later Bessent said a separate tranche of frozen Iranian funds, unconnected to the GL U cargo, would sit in a US-controlled Qatar escrow, accessible only for American food and medical exports; Iran rejected the terms outright while its oil income under GL X kept flowing unconstrained.
The Cuba sanctions net keeps widening
Bessent authorised General Licence 134B on 18 April 2026, extending Russian seaborne-oil cover to Cuba through 16 May on the grounds the cargo was already in transit. His Treasury then anchored the legal architecture behind Cuba's EO 14404 sanctions wave, issuing Cuba General Licence 1 as a savings clause on 7 May and adding the first individual SDN designation under the order the same day.
On 10 July four members of Congress wrote jointly to Bessent and Secretary Rubio urging sanctions on CSMC, Cuba's overseas medical-mission operator, as a forced-labour scheme. Three days later his OFAC issued FAQ 1262, granting GECOMEX and GEMAR a wind-down to 12 August but giving no guidance on the newly designated tourism ministry MINTUR.
Bank oversight now covers AI risk
Bessent co-convened an emergency meeting at Treasury headquarters with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on 8 April 2026, summoning the CEOs of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs to discuss a frontier AI model's systemic risk profile, the first recorded instance of the Fed and Treasury convening Wall Street leadership over an AI model's capabilities.
The move extended his Treasury role beyond sanctions into financial-stability oversight of AI deployment. On 2 July, OpenAI's Sam Altman pitched Trump, Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnick a 5 per cent US equity stake in the company, styled on Alaska's oil-dividend fund, placing Bessent in the room for a live proposal on how Washington might tax AI's gains.
What did OFAC's FAQ 1262 do for Cuba sanctions wind-down?
What is Scott Bessent's role in the Iran conflict?
What did Scott Bessent say about Iran's frozen assets in Qatar?
What is OFAC General Licence X and what does it allow Iran to do?
What did Scott Bessent say about Hezbollah in June 2026?
Why did Scott Bessent warn Oman over the Strait of Hormuz?
Why did the US Treasury sanction Oman's role in the Strait of Hormuz?
Did Bessent change his position on Iranian oil sanctions?
What did Bessent say about Russian sanctions waivers?
Did Trump use Bessent to punish Spain?
Who is Scott Bessent?
Did Scott Bessent announce new Iran sanctions on 13 August 2026?
