MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump says while a ceasefire with Iran is over, he is still open to negotiations. This comes after days of intense air strikes between the two sides. The stakes for reaching a peace deal are high. President Trump wants the Strait of Hormuz open. That’s to help bring down oil prices ahead of the midterm elections. But Iran could also stand to rake in billions of dollars if an agreement can be reached. NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam joins us. Hey there.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So to take stock of where we are, there was this agreement that was signed three weeks back. President Trump wanted the Strait of Hormuz open. He thought he got what he wanted. What did Iran get out of that deal?
NORTHAM: It got a lot of sweeteners from the U.S., which would have equated into a windfall of money. And, you know, that included the potential unlocking of tens of billions of dollars of Iran’s own money that’s been frozen in foreign banks. And this is from oil sales it had made before Trump pulled out of the Obama nuclear deal in 2018. The exact amount isn’t known, but I spoke with Suzanne Maloney, and she’s an Iran specialist at the Brookings Institution. And she says getting that money could be a lifeline for Iran’s battered economy if the regime held up its end of the agreement with the U.S. Here she is.
SUZANNE MALONEY: There really is quite a sizable amount of funding Iran has not had access to that would be potentially provided if, in fact, we see the reciprocal steps that the Iranians were responsible for making good on their commitment to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
NORTHAM: Now the agreement also proposed that a $300 billion investment fund be set up for reconstruction, and Trump suggested Iran’s Gulf neighbors, you know, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, could make up the core of that fund. But, you know, this fund was in its very, very early stages.
KELLY: Well, and am I right in recalling, Jackie, that the sweetener, the other big incentive the U.S. had offered was waiving all sanctions on Iran’s oil. That must have been huge for Iran.
NORTHAM: Oh, yes, it was important to Iran and potentially worth a huge amount of money. You know, oil is a key driver of Iran’s economy, and there have been sanctions on the sector since Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in his first term. Iran has still been able to sell to China, but it’s been at rock-bottom prices, and it’s had to move the crude using a shadow fleet, you know, these old oil tankers.
I asked Gregory Brew what lifting the sanctions did for Iran. And he’s a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, and he focuses on both oil and Iran. And he said, initially, countries were skittish of buying Iranian oil despite the waivers because they didn’t know how solid the agreement was. But he said, over the long term, the potential value of the sanctions waiver was huge.
GREGORY BREW: With the waiver, Iran could have done direct deals with countries, could have done those deals in dollars, which would have been of great value to the Iranian economy. And it also would have reduced Iran’s dependence on China.
NORTHAM: And, Mary Louise, Brew said Iran stood to make between 8 and $9 billion during the two-month agreement.
KELLY: I’m hearing a lot of would have, could have, like, past tense stuff. So let me bring us up to this week, when we saw the U.S. slapping sanctions back on Iran’s oil. Why?
NORTHAM: Well, the U.S. pulled back on those waivers after Iran attacked three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. And the vessels had been trying to transit the strait using a route that hugs Oman’s coastline rather than Iran’s coastline. Now, Tehran says it dictates what happens in the strait and so launched these strikes on the vessels to send a message. But the U.S. says, no, Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz and so revoked the waivers and launched air strikes on Iran. The regime was furious because those waivers would have put much-needed money in its coffers, and that’s really what sparked this latest round of fighting.
KELLY: That’s NPR’s Jackie Northam. Thank you.
NORTHAM: Thank you.
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