Iran dangles 'trillion-dollar' incentive for Trump in deal talks

As countries around the world try to bargain with U.S. President Donald Trump over tariffs, long-term adversary Iran is pitching its sanctioned economy to him as an investment opportunity.

With talks between Iran and the U.S. over the Islamic Republic’s atomic activity showing signs of progress, top Iranian officials are for the first time in decades overtly promoting their economy to the White House to secure a lasting and more effective nuclear accord. If Trump wants a deal that’s better for the U.S. than the one he jettisoned in 2018, the Iranians want the same for Iran.

Tehran’s top envoy, Abbas Araghchi, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last week that a new nuclear deal could give U.S. companies access to what he claims is a “trillion-dollar” economic opening in country of around 90 million people and with some of the world’s biggest oil and gas reserves.

“Saying there’s a trillion-dollar opportunity as opposed to a trillion-dollar disastrous war is a way to hook President Trump into a deal,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

It’s a strategy that echoes Russia’s in its negotiations with the U.S. over ending the war in Ukraine.

Transforming the U.S.-Iran relationship from one of hostility to one of economic cooperation would be a big ask but has the potential to help resolve a conflict that’s kept Middle East security fragile for decades.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions and trade embargoes on Tehran since the countries severed ties in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iran hostage crisis. As a theocratic state, Iran has defined itself as a bulwark against U.S. influence in the wider Middle East, with its nuclear activities and anti-Israel policy key sources of tension.

Araghchi said his country’s nuclear program itself could become a target for U.S. investment, representing “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts.”

“The Iranian market alone is big enough to revitalize the struggling nuclear industry in the U.S.,” he said in separate remarks on X last week.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson, in a response to a query from Bloomberg, said Trump is clear Iran cannot have an atomic weapon. The spokesperson added it is not in U.S. national interests to negotiate issues such as these publicly.

“We do not confirm or deny details of ongoing negotiations,” said a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council.

Trump has previously spoken of Iran’s economic potential. And earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that he asked Russian President Vladimir Putin — an ally of Iran — to help broker talks with Tehran.

“I want Iran to prosper,” Trump said this month. “I don’t want to do anything that will hurt anyone, but Iran can’t have nuclear weapons. We don’t want to take away their industry or their land.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who grudgingly approved the Obama-era 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump later abandoned — has said he sees no reason why American investors shouldn’t spend their money in the Islamic Republic, according to President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The stakes in the negotiations are arguably much higher for Iran than the U.S. Trump’s threatened to bomb nuclear facilities if Tehran doesn’t accept a deal.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic’s regional influence has been significantly weakened by Israel’s war with Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and its bombardment of Hezbollah last year. Syria’s ex-President Bashar al-Assad, another ally of Tehran, was toppled in December.

Khamenei’s hard-line supporters appear to have fallen in line with Araghchi’s approach to Washington. It’s a sign the clerical establishment is under pressure to address an economic crisis that’s amplifying its widespread unpopularity at home.

“They don’t have many cards up their sleeves in terms of negotiations, they’re less threatening than a few years ago and their proxies have lost a lot of their influence,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler. “They’re trying to say to the U.S. that you can benefit from a deal with us and we are open to your companies to invest.”

While the 2015 nuclear deal suspended a raft of secondary U.S. restrictions, it didn’t remove primary sanctions, and the U.S. Treasury continued to prohibit direct American investment in the Iranian economy.

After Trump walked away from that accord, his hard-line approach, dubbed “maximum pressure,” reimposed sanctions and went much further, including banning other countries’ purchases of oil from the OPEC member.

Iran’s oil exports slumped, foreign companies left, and the currency cratered in value — it’s lost almost 90% of its value against the dollar since 2018. The country faced a fuel and power crisis last winter.

Oil and gas officials are trying to woo foreign money to cover the $135 billion bill they say is required to fix the energy industry.

“It will be one of the latest huge opportunities for oil and gas companies globally,” Falakshahi said, adding that the financial terms offered by Iran to foreign companies will be crucial.

There are other major barriers to investing in Iran. These include corruption, the state’s heavy influence on the economy and an isolated banking system that lags behind international lending standards. U.S. firms investing in Iran may also face a backlash from anti-Iran hawks in Washington and Israel.

Primary sanctions

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the original nuclear agreement is formally known, imposed strict limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment in return for sanctions relief.

Within months of the deal coming into effect in January 2016, Iranian officials complained economic benefits were not materializing. The main problem was that European businesses were finding it difficult to do business with Iran because of the remaining U.S. restrictions.

This time, Iran’s goal “is to get the primary sanctions removed and pave the way for the country’s economic and technological development,” said Bijan Khajepour, an economist and a managing partner at Eurasian Nexus Partners, a consulting firm.

Trump’s original vision was for a new deal that restricted Iran’s support of proxies and even its missile program. But recent public statements suggest he’s downsized his goal to ensuring Tehran never develops a nuclear weapon.

Offering the U.S. a chance to be an investor in Iran’s nuclear sector is one way of assuring Washington of that objective, while making it less likely a future U.S. government will abandon any deal.

Yet while unprecedented levels of access to the Iranian economy might sound attractive to Trump and solve some of Iran’s problems, it would require a huge level of political commitment and change from the Islamic Republic, said Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“To lift all U.S. primary sanctions and legal restriction on trade, you’d need a transformational approach,” she said. “It will require huge gives on the Iranian side, and a major push by Trump.”

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(With assistance from Arsalan Shahla and Natalia Drozdiak.)

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