[Financial News] The U.S. government, which has begun targeting third-country companies and institutions that do business with Iran, has signaled that it will broaden the scope of its crackdown. Washington also warned that China would be no exception if it continues trading with Iran. Ahead of the Group of Twenty (G20) finance ministers' meeting in North Carolina on the 30th local time, Scott Bessent said in an interview with AP that another bank would be hit with additional sanctions this week. "This would be financial violence if we absolutely had to do it," he said. "We will let people know that we know who they are, that they are aware of what they are doing, and that they need to stop these activities." After briefly halting military strikes on Iran on June 24, the United States has since pressured Tehran through economic sanctions rather than military action. In an announcement on the 24th of this month, Bessent said the U.S. would impose secondary sanctions that would cut off third-country companies and banks doing business with Iran from the American financial system. He warned that third-country firms and financial institutions dealing with Iran in digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping would be closely monitored. In an announcement on the 28th, the United States named Egypt's state-owned Bank Misr as the first target of the secondary sanctions. The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated five branches of Bank Misr in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), as "primary money laundering concerns." The Treasury Department said the branches processed about $1.8 billion in illicit funds from 2024 through recently for shell companies linked to Iran's Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). If the measures are finalized after a 30-day comment period, the UAE branches of Bank Misr will be cut off from access to the U.S. financial system. When Bessent announced the sanctions on the 24th, he said that no one could escape the reach of U.S. sanctions, without directly mentioning China, even though Chinese financial institutions, Iran's largest trading partners, were not included on the list. When reporters asked on the 27th why Chinese financial institutions were not being sanctioned, President Donald Trump said, "You don't know whether I'm doing it or not. I don't have to announce everything," and added, "Right?" In the interview on the 30th, Bessent said he would speak with Chinese officials at the G20 meeting after being asked why China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, had been left off the sanctions list. He then stressed, "All options are on the table." Responding to the view that the United States is reluctant to confront China, he dismissed it as "a completely false frame created by the media" and argued that the United States and China agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. [email protected] Park Jong-won Reporter