Whether or not the 60-day diplomatic ping pong between the Trump administration and remnants of the Islamic Republic produces anything resembling peace, one thing is clear: There will be no shower of gold over Iran as the faction taking part in the talks pretend.
The faction that unites the remnants of the Rafsanjani cartel with some erstwhile foes among the military-security mafia is beating the drums about Iran gaining access to frozen assets, estimated at over $100 billion in 22 countries, shoveling money by imposing tariffs on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and starting to export crude on a no-tomorrow basis.
But the piece-de-resistence in this imaginary banquet is the $300 billion carrot waved by President Donald Trump as an alternative to the stick if bombing Iran to Stone Age.
Put those mouth-watering figures together and you are talking of a $1 trillion bonanza.
Thus, it is no wonder why many in the United States and elsewhere are concerned that such a boost to Iran’s moribund economy could speed up its long-time plans to develop nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles to export revolution to the region and beyond.
Some of those expressing that concern are Trump’s political foes such as the hedge-fund guru Bill Ackman, a leading donor to the Democrat Party.
Others include anti-American pundits in Europe not to mention some Israelis who feel Trump has let them down. Some figures in the Iranian opposition in exile are also concerned that their hope of gaining power with American support is waning.
As often was the case with matters regarding Iran’s weird regime this time too one could say we’ve been there, seen that and bought the T-shirt.
Rewind to 2015 and President Barack Obama’s disastrous “nuke deal” with the mullahs known as JCPOA.
Tehran headlines quoted then President Hassan Rouhani saying “The Wall of Sanctions Has Fallen!”; implying that Jericho is ours. Commentators claimed the Islamic Republic will have so much money it wouldn’t know how to spend it.
Tehran ended up getting only $1.7 billion in the form of green-backs smuggled in Samsonites. In exchange, Iran was to be put under the tutelage of the so-called 5+1 posse of powers for 15 to 25 years.
Joe Biden too waved a carrot in the shape of an $8 billion in Iranian frozen assets in South Korea. The money was transferred from Seoul to a bank in Qatar on its way to Iran but never reached there.
A year later, Qatar announced that it had charged $1 billion to “host” the money. Last week, it was announced that the money would be transferred to the Central Bank of Pakistan on its way to Iran, after a slimming diet that reduced its size by a further $1 billion as “for sundry banking and insurance charges.” Vice President JD Vance, portraying the Swiss talks as “constructive,” promised to speed up the transfer as Pakistanis salivated about getting their cut.
The truth is that releasing Iran’s frozen assets doesn’t depend on Trump’s say-so.
It would require the agreements of more than 40 countries, including the European Union 27, that must lift the “snapback” mechanism they reactivated last summer. What the biggest holder of Iranian frozen assets - China - might do is anyone’s guess. So far, it has refused cash payments, insisting Iran buy Chinese goods instead.
At some point, one would also need a new UN Security Council resolution, the eighth on Iran, to loosen the string purse across the globe.
The risk for Iran in that case is that the Trump administration - anxious to avoid being branded as an extension of the Obama-Biden disaster - might seek a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that would expose Iran to UN-sanctioned military action in case of its violation.
This is why Vance speaks of a “mandatory” rather than a merely recommending resolution of the type that endorses apple pie and motherhood.
In such a case, the resolution may be vetoed by either China or Russia or both, dispersing the cloud of peace fomented by Trump and his imaginary “good guys” in Tehran.
If Trump were not as clueless in diplomacy as he appears to be, one might even think that he has a Machiavellian plan to get Tehran to commit itself to what the US demands, more than it did in 2015, but allow it no chance of cheating without facing another war this time sanctioned by the UN.
Now let’s suppose that the Trump-Vance duo really want to save the Islamic Republic from the consequences of half a century of mischief-making, incompetence and crime and help them get $300 billion.
The question is: where would that money come from?
Iran’s Arab neighbors including the Qataris and the Omanis didn’t invest a penny there when there was no tension. Same as Türkiye. More than 50 French companies, including Total and Peugeot, arrived with big plans from investment, carried out feasibility studies and did some preliminary work but ended up fleeing when the faction that had signed with them was sidelined by the faction that hadn’t.
Dozens of companies from Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, and Sweden have had similar experiences with Iran. Even Russia hasn’t been able to invest in Iranian economy.
In 2004, the British HSBC bank planned to open a branch in Tehran but thought better of it when it became clear the IRGC wanted to use it to funnel funds to Hezbollah and its political siblings in Iraq and Syria.
Since 1979, Iran has earned over $1.2 trillion from oil and other exports and squandered it on useless projects such as a nuclear one that hasn’t produced a single watt of electricity, building 12,000 kilometers of tunnels; larger than the whole of Qatar, to hide missiles and drones, financing Hamas and other “proxies,” massacring Syrians, creating Hezbollah cells in Europe, the US, Canada and Latin America.
The solution to the “Iran problem” isn’t money; it is good governance.
And that requires a change of regime beyond what Trump pretends has already happened.
