Jillian Michaels and Susan Kokinda discussed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s campaign against Iran, with Kokinda arguing that the administration’s strategy goes far beyond sanctions inside Iran and instead focuses on cutting off the international financial networks that sustain the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Tehran’s proxy operations.

Michaels said she had heard sharply different assessments of whether economic pressure could significantly weaken Iran’s leadership.

She contrasted skepticism from former intelligence officials with the broader financial strategy outlined by Kokinda and others.

“The way you guys have described Scott Bessent's strategy is mind-boggling, because I've spoken to a lot of people, most from the CIA,” Michaels said.

“VDH, Victor Davis Hanson sees it exactly how you see it, but it's interesting, because people who are coming from intelligence, like former, say, target experts, and they're like, Ah, you're never going to be able to you're never going to be able to starve the mullahs.”

Michaels said those skeptics view Iran’s leadership as sufficiently ideologically committed to withstand extreme economic hardship.

“They're just looking at this like they're ideologically captured; there's no amount of pain they can't tolerate,” Michaels said.

“But when people like yourselves explain the strategy, it actually seems like it could work, cuz it's not really about Iran. Can you outline this for people?”

Kokinda pointed to Bessent’s Operation Economic Outcast, which the Treasury Department formally launched in August as a government-wide campaign targeting Iran and foreign entities that provide the regime with financial support.

Treasury has since sanctioned banking, aviation, digital-asset, and proxy networks tied to Iran.

“Well, one of my favorite moments in the last couple of weeks is when Scott Bessent, who truly is the greatest Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton, we haven't had that many good ones because most of them have served Wall Street or the financial elites. This guy is serving the Republic,” Kokinda said.

That assessment of Bessent is Kokinda’s opinion. She then focused on the Treasury strategy itself.

“But he did a press conference, and he put the IRGC on notice. This was after he launched Operation Economic Outcast, right? Where we're drying up their financial flows,” Kokinda said.

Treasury has described the objective in similar operational terms.

When Bessent launched the initiative, he said the department intended to sever Iran’s economic connections around the world and isolate the regime financially.

Subsequent actions have targeted Iranian shadow-banking networks, foreign banks, cryptocurrency infrastructure, airlines and entities accused of assisting Tehran or the IRGC.

Kokinda said Bessent’s reference to offshore assets in the British Virgin Islands was particularly significant.

“And he says to them, We know where your trust funds are in the British Virgin Islands,” Kokinda said.

She argued that the statement was meant to show Iranian officials that Treasury is looking beyond conventional banks and directly at offshore financial structures.

“Now, there are a lot of offshore havens: Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, all of the other Cayman Islands. I don't think it was random that Scott Bessent said the British Virgin Islands,” Kokinda said.

According to Kokinda, the broader objective is to identify international systems that allow sanctioned governments, organizations and individuals to move money outside normal regulatory channels.

“Because he wanted to make very, very clear we understand how this wild west, unregulated offshore banking system, which was created directly by the City of London, starting in the 1950s, where they set up all these completely unregulated banking operations, especially in the Caribbean, in the Cayman Islands,” Kokinda said.

Her description of the origins and structure of offshore banking represents her interpretation of that history.

Treasury’s public announcements have focused more narrowly on identifying entities, individuals and financial networks accused of facilitating Iranian sanctions evasion.

Kokinda said that distinction is important because, in her view, the administration cannot succeed simply by applying pressure within Iran itself.

“He was letting not just the IRGC know, because the issue of how you end this war is not just defined by inside the borders of Iran,” she said.

Treasury has repeatedly pursued networks based outside Iran.

In recent months, its actions have targeted entities and individuals in China, Hong Kong, Russia and other jurisdictions accused of assisting Iranian weapons procurement, oil sales, transportation and financial activity.

Kokinda argued that cutting those outside connections is the central element of the strategy.

“The way you end this war is you cut off the lifelines that have been going into the IRGC, to this whole radical Islamic operation,” she said.

She then connected her argument to a much broader historical claim.

“Which you can trace back to the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood by the British in the 1920s.”

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