Amid Saber-Rattling, Iran Touts Economic Benefits To West If Nuclear Deal Reached

Days ahead of another round of talks with US negotiators — and on the heels of more saber-rattling by the Trump administration — Iran is touting the potential mutual economic benefits of a deal that would terminate the West’s long-running sanctions regime against the second-largest and second-most-populous country in the Middle East.  

“For the sake of an agreement’s durability, it is essential that the U.S. also benefits in areas with high and quick economic returns,” said Iranian Deputy Director for Economic Diplomacy Hamid Ghanbari on Sunday, according to Iran’s FARS news agency. He said that, during negotiations, there had been discussion of what FARS called “shared interests in the fields of oil, gas, mining and even aircraft purchases.” 

Sanctions have long thwarted Iran’s need to update the country’s passenger jet fleets. After the 2015 nuclear deal was reached and sanctions eased, Iran raced to put in orders for new aircraft from Western suppliers. When President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal — despite Iran’s full compliance with it — Boeing instantly lost $20 billion worth of business.  

Oil prices were flat in early-Monday global trading. ”With both sides expected to hold firm on their core ​red ​lines, expectations are low that a deal can be ​reached and this is likely to be the ‌calm before the storm,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore told Yahoo. 

Oman is set to mediate talks in Geneva this week. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is leading the Iranian delegation, while the US delegation will be headed by Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Ahead of the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his sixth US meeting with Trump in just the last year. Netanyahu continues to push for terms that guarantee Iranian refusals and thus set the stage for more war.

Those poison-pill demands include Iran ceasing all uranium enrichment and — preposterously — dismantling the conventional, ballistic missile program that proved so effective in responding to Israel’s initiation of war last June. Trump reportedly told Netanyahu in December that he’d back Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missiles program if a new deal isn’t reached.  

In May 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal that had been negotiated between Iran and various Western governments and signed in 2015. Under that deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran agreed to a wide array of nuclear safeguards. They included eliminating its medium-enriched uranium, reducing its low-enriched uranium inventory by 98%, capping future enrichment at 3.67%, slashing its number of centrifuges, submitting to enhanced external monitoring, and rendering its heavy-water reactor unusable by pouring concrete in it. 

At the time of Trump’s withdrawal, Iran was in full compliance, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In response to the re-imposition of US sanctions, Iran began straying from its own commitments under the deal, seemingly pushing the only lever it had to bring the deal back and get out from under sanctions that have sapped Iran’s economy and inflicted a harsh toll on innocent Iranian citizens. 

On Friday, Reuters reported that the Pentagon is preparing for a ”sustained, weeks-long military campaign” against Iran if President Trump gives the green light. That news came as a second American aircraft carrier was making its way to the region. The USS Gerald Ford — the world’s largest — will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is already on station. Before receiving its new orders, the Ford had been operating in the Caribbean after being abruptly redeployed from the Mediterranean — part of an earlier show of force tied to posturing against Venezuela.