Turkey sources about 13 percent of its natural gas imports from Iran — 7.7 billion cubic meters last year, making Tehran its fourth-largest supplier after Russia, Azerbaijan and the United States — and now faces a choice between defying Washington's economic pressure campaign against Iran or losing a winter energy source with weeks of notice. [1] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that any country continuing to do business with Iran after an unspecified deadline "can expect economic punishment," and that President Trump is personally calling relevant world leaders, including, implicitly, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. [1]

This paper reported Wednesday on the mechanics of that campaign, Operation Economic Outcast, when Treasury suspended general licenses covering educational exchanges, remittances and sports programs tied to Iran and gave institutions until September 8 to wind down, even as Iran's foreign ministry called the underlying campaign a "declaration of war." Turkey's exposure shows what that campaign looks like when it reaches a NATO ally rather than a compliance department: a sovereign government now has to decide whether an energy contract survives a pressure campaign it had no hand in designing.

Gas flows have continued despite the war. Bilateral trade between Turkey and Iran remained a robust $3.1 billion in the first half of the year, down only 3 percent from the prior year, and Iranian visitors accounted for 5.5 percent of Turkey's foreign arrivals through July. [1] Deliveries kept moving even through a brief interruption after strikes on Iran's South Pars gas field early in the conflict, and continued even after Iran fired four missiles at Turkey in the war's opening weeks — a strike Ankara absorbed without cutting off gas purchases. [1]

Erdogan has strong reasons not to test Washington's patience now. He is due in Washington next month, is trying to offload Russian air-defense equipment to clear the way for F-35 fighter jet talks, and wants back into the consortium producing the fifth-generation aircraft. Trump praised Erdogan as more "loyal" than other NATO leaders at last month's summit in Ankara, and the two spoke by phone a week ago, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency. [1] "Erdogan would not do anything to upset Trump and jeopardize improving ties with Washington in the run-up to elections in less than two years," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, a strategist at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV. "Ankara would clearly side with Washington, even if it is forced to secure more expensive energy supplies elsewhere before winter." [1]

The Turkey-Iran gas relationship is entangled with a second, older dispute between Washington and Ankara: the long-running criminal case against Turkish state lender Turkiye Halk Bankasi, known as Halkbank, over alleged violations of prior Iran sanctions. In a sign of the same warming ties that make Erdogan reluctant to defy Trump now, the Justice Department asked a judge in June to drop that case entirely. [1] The two threads — a bank prosecution being wound down and a gas relationship now under fresh pressure — illustrate how selectively Washington's sanctions machinery can move even against the same country's dealings with Iran, extending leniency on one front while tightening it on another.

Operation Economic Outcast, the umbrella name Bessent has given the broader campaign, is explicitly designed to close off Iran's options rather than target any single sector. [1] Turkey is not alone in facing this choice: the campaign's stated goal is forcing every country still trading with Tehran to pick between Washington's terms and continued Iranian business, and Turkey's position as a NATO member and prospective F-35 buyer makes its calculus more consequential than most. Neither the US nor Turkish government has said publicly whether Ankara will receive a formal exemption, a wind-down period, or no accommodation at all — the same category of silence this paper has tracked across other fronts of the sanctions campaign this week.

The immediate supply picture is murkier than a simple cutoff. Turkey's 25-year, 9.5-billion-cubic-meter annual contract with Iran technically expired at the end of July, but Ankara has continued importing so-called "make-up gas" compensating for volumes paid for but not delivered under the old deal. [1] Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in August that storage sites are full, and Turkey has diversified toward LNG imports, including from the United States, alongside ramped-up domestic production from its Sakarya offshore field in the Black Sea — though additional Azerbaijani supply is not scheduled until 2029. [1] Turkey's Energy Ministry declined to comment this week, and Iran's Oil Ministry has not responded to multiple requests for comment, leaving the size of the actual winter shortfall — and how Ankara plans to close it — unresolved for now. [1]

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels