The TOI correspondent from Washington: Four India-based companies – and three Indian nationals associated with two of them – have been swept into the Trump administration’s new economic offensive against Iran, adding a potentially combustible new layer to the already strained US-India relations.The US State Department on Monday named Portease Partners LLP, an India-based customs broker, for facilitating multiple shipments of Iranian petrochemical products into India while sanctioning it. Its designated partners Indrismiya Ashrafmiya Sheikh and Harish Ramachandra Rangi, both Indian nationals, were also sanctioned.The other three Indian targets are Sadashiva Overseas Limited, which Washington says imported about $69 million worth of Iranian-origin petroleum products between February 2024 and June 2025; PP Softtech Private Limited, which allegedly imported about $25 million worth of Iranian petroleum products between January 2024 and June 2025; and Prakrutees Infra Impex India Private Limited, which imported Iranian petroleum products worth about $25 million between May 2023 and February 2026. Prashant Garg, an Indian national and director of PP Softtech, was also designated.Although the approximately $ 120 million in imports would be chump change in the overall scheme of things, the message from Washington is unmistakable: doing business with Iran is no longer merely a question of complying with US sanctions on Tehran. Foreign intermediaries, importers, brokers, shipping companies and financial institutions that help Iran generate revenue can themselves become targets.That, says Treasury Secretary and Trump enforcer Scott Bessent, is the purpose of “Operation Economic Outcast” : it is designed to sever Iran’s remaining financial lifelines by targeting oil and petrochemical revenues, shipping, banking, technology, gold, aviation and digital assets. Nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels were designated in the latest round.“Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” Bessent warned, adding that President Trump was personally calling foreign leaders with “specific requests” to cease their interactions with Iran.Trump himself had warned that countries allowing their banks, businesses, airports or government agencies to provide Iran with a “lifeline” would face “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.” Earlier, he described the campaign as “ECONOMIC D-DAY.”For India, the shocks from Washington are growing by the week. Although New Delhi has sharply reduced its economic exposure to Iran over the years, trade with Teheran and the strategically important Chabahar port – through which India accesses Afghanistan to get around Pakistan – remain part of its calculations. Indian exports to Iran — including rice, tea and pharmaceuticals — could also face additional disruption as sanctions and the suspension of Dubai-based trade and financial transactions make payments and shipping more difficult.The latest sanctions therefore risk aggravating a relationship already battered by disputes over tariffs, Russia and the Trump administration’s increasingly transactional approach to New Delhi, according to analysts. Evan Feigenbaum, a veteran Asia policymaker, captured the concern bluntly, saying the “one-two punch” of secondary sanctions would “further erode US-India relations,” which he said had “largely tanked during Trump’s second term.”The asymmetry is striking when one factors in China. Washington is threatening India with the full force of secondary sanctions, yet when it comes to Beijing, which is Iran’s biggest oil customer, Washington remains feckless. Although the administration has also sanctioned a substantial number of Chinese and Hong Kong-linked entities in its Iran crackdown, the scope of the action stops short of targeting China’s major financial institutions or imposing the kind of sweeping country-level economic penalties that would risk a direct confrontation with Beijing because China possesses enormous leverage over the US through its dominance of rare earths and critical minerals. The result is an uncomfortable contrast: Washington can be fearsome toward countries with little capacity to retaliate, while becoming markedly more circumspect when confronting a great power with economic choke points of its own.Indeed, Bessent conspicuously declined to name China when asked about major Iranian trading partners, saying that some discussions were better conducted privately. Iran, meanwhile, has dismissed the campaign as bluster. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Washington was not in an economic position to further restrict Iran’s relations with other countries and claimed Tehran’s trading partners were not taking the American warnings seriously. Tehran has also threatened retaliation against countries that cooperate with Washington, while China has rejected unilateral US sanctions as ineffective and called for diplomacy.
