The US Treasury Department is weighing a plan to take frozen Iranian assets and hand them to Gulf allies to cover damages caused by Iranian military strikes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly leading the effort to assess the costs that Iranian missile and drone attacks have inflicted on regional energy infrastructure across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Those repair costs have been estimated at $58 billion.
The numbers behind the standoff
Iran has somewhere between $100 billion and $120 billion in assets frozen globally, a consequence of decades of sanctions and geopolitical isolation. Of that total, roughly $2 billion sits within US jurisdiction.
The $2 billion the US directly controls is a fraction of the estimated $58 billion in damages. That means Washington would either need to coordinate with other jurisdictions holding Iranian funds, or the initiative stays largely symbolic in dollar terms.
