The Trump administration is poised to unveil its new “economic D-Day” plan Monday afternoon as part of its latest ploy to force Iran into submission, but in doing so, is destined to trigger a “predictable, catastrophic reaction,” warned international security expert Robert Pape.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed the plan Sunday in an op-ed published in the Financial Times, in which he revealed that the Trump administration was readying the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.” While specific details of the plan have yet to be revealed, its key component will be the use of secondary sanctions, which aim to harshly penalize any nation or entity that financially supports Iran.

Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, warned Monday in an analysis that the Trump administration’s plan was not only doomed to fail, but would likely backfire in a spectacular fashion.

“It is a seductive promise. It is also flatly contradicted by history. My 30 years of research on wartime blockades and economic sanctions shows a brutal reality: maximum economic pressure alone has not won a single major war since 1918,” Pape wrote in an analysis published on his Substack.

“From the post-WWI blockades to modern conflicts, massive economic sieges consistently fail to break a regime’s political will. Instead, they often trigger a predictable, catastrophic reaction. By backing Tehran into a corner, this financial siege poses an imminent risk to global energy markets, threatening to shut down critical shipping lanes and spike oil prices overnight.”

Perhaps the most notable example of sanctions failing to achieve a stated end is the United States’ 66-year embargo against Cuba, which has been internationally condemned since 1992 for its impact on Cubans. The embargo was imposed shortly after the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, who permitted Cuba to become what’s been described as a “virtual slave state,” allowing its resources and infrastructure to be largely “owned by American companies.”

“Bessent’s strategy isn’t going to end the war,” Pape continued. “It is actively walking Washington straight into a devastating stage of the escalation trap.”

The Washington Post has been ordered by an arbitrator to rehire a Black columnist who clashed with the Opinion page editor who abruptly left the paper just weeks ago.

According to a report from the New York Times, billionaire Jeff Bezos's news organization will rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The arbitrator also ordered the company to compensate her with back pay.

Sarah Miller Espinosa, the arbitrator, said in a written decision Thursday that The Post "did not have good and sufficient cause" to terminate Ms. Attiah and "violated" its labor agreement. "The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct," Espinosa wrote.

The ruling comes just three weeks after Opinion Editor Adam O'Neal announced his departure after just one year, having previously boasted he expected to stay for years, media watchdog Status previously reported.

During an all-hands meeting, he told Opinion staffers he was leaving for personal family reasons. The explanation caught staff off-guard, given his previously expressed commitment to the role.

The Washington Post said in its termination letter that Attiah's posts about Mr. Kirk had harmed "the integrity" of the organization and violated standards requiring employees to use social media with civility and respect.

Attiah's remarks about Kirk's assassination, posted to the social network Bluesky on Sept. 10, the day he was shot, responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting.

"Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence," Attiah wrote in one of the posts.

According to the Times, "Lawyers for The Washington Post and Ms. Attiah made their arguments before Ms. Espinosa in June during a hearing that included testimony from Ms. Attiah; Adam O’Neal, then the opinion editor at The Washington Post; and Wayne Connell, the company’s chief human resources officer. Ms. Attiah was represented by Democracy Defenders Action, a progressive nonprofit co-founded by the lawyer Norman Eisen, and by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild."

In his testimony, O'Neal said that he saw Attiah's posts the morning after Kirk died and sent them to Connell.

"Karen's social media feed yesterday and today is beyond the pale, completely unacceptable for someone associated with Opinions," O'Neal wrote, the Times is reporting.

Soon after, O'Neal and Connell met with Will Lewis, then the chief executive of The Washington Post, to discuss the posts. They ultimately decided to fire Attiah.

CNN's John Berman suggested "ominous music" should accompany the latest reporting on President Donald Trump's economy.

The Treasury Department could tap nearly $1 trillion in general accounts to fund an increased pace of government bond purchases, according to two senior agency officials, in a move that CNN global economic analyst Rana Foroohar called "a really big deal" with troubling implications.

The U.S. carries too much debt, she said, and international buyers increasingly don't want more of it, wary of what they see as the president's mishandling of the economy and unpredictable flip-flopping on who counts as an ally versus an adversary.

Using Treasury funds to prop up the bond market and hold down borrowing costs, Foroohar warned, is the kind of move "troubled emerging market countries used to do," not a message that reassures global investors, and she said it's already making the dollar look like a weaker bet, which is bad news both for the U.S. broadly and for anyone holding dollars.

"I feel like we need ominous music to play when we talk about the bond market," Berman said. "Tremors in the bond market requires, like, dark, bleak music."

Foroohar blamed that bond market anxiety on the president's escalating trade war with Canada. The U.S. has imposed a 50 percent tariff on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, from dairy to alcohol to paper products, and Canada plans dollar-for-dollar retaliation on U.S. goods starting Sept. 8.

The analyst agreed with a Wall Street Journal editorial calling the fight "the dumbest trade war revisited," calling a trade war with America's closest northern ally "idiocy."

While Canada is more economically exposed overall given the size of the U.S. market, Foroohar noted Americans will feel real pain too, since Canadian lumber and energy imports are sensitive, already-strained categories tied to fuel, housing and building costs.

Foroohar argued the economics and politics are now inseparable, especially heading into the midterms, with voters in both red and blue states expressing confusion and frustration over tariff policy.

She also pointed to the political dynamics in Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney has positioned himself as unwilling to capitulate to Trump, particularly over U.S. pressure on Canadian French-language content protections — a sovereignty issue Foroohar said would provoke any nation.

"Things like trying to prevent the Canadians from pushing French-language streaming content and cultural products, that's a sovereign issue," Foroohar said. "I mean, any nation would feel a little miffed if you say that they can't, you know, produce products in their own, you know, content in their own language. It's a dual-language country. That's something that is going to get anybody's back up, and Carney is certainly not going to take it lying down."

- YouTube youtu.be