US President Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians, if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal, according to Financial Tribune.
Trump has in recent weeks shown openness to entertaining French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan, according to four sources with knowledge of Trump’s conversations with the French leader cited by The Daily Beast.
Two of those sources said US State Department officials, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are also open to weighing the French proposal, in which the Paris government would effectively ease the economic sanctions regime that the Trump administration has applied on Tehran for more than a year.
The deal put forward by France would compensate Iran for oil sales disrupted by American sanctions. A large portion of Iran’s economy relies on cash from oil sales. Most of that money is frozen in bank accounts across the globe. The $15 billion credit line would be guaranteed by Iranian oil.
In exchange for the cash, Iran would have to come back into compliance with the nuclear accord it signed with the world’s major powers in 2015. Tehran would also have to ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and agree not to impede maritime navigation in the area. Lastly, Tehran would have to commit to regional Middle East talks in the future.
While Trump has been skeptical of helping Iran without preconditions in public, the president has at least hinted at an openness to considering Macron’s pitch for placating the Iranian government—a move intended to help bring the Iranians to the negotiating table and to rescue the nuclear agreement that Trump and his former national security adviser John Bolton worked so hard to torpedo.
At the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France last month, Trump told reporters that Iran might need a “short-term letter of credit or loan” that could “get them over a very rough patch”.
Signal of Openness
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise appearance at that meeting.
To Robert Malley, who worked on Iran policy during the Obama administration, that visit indicated that “Trump must have signaled openness to Macron’s idea, otherwise Zarif would not have flown to Biarritz at the last minute.”
“Clearly, Trump responded to Macron in a way that gave the French president a reason to invite Zarif, and give him a reason to come,” he said.
The French proposal would require the Trump administration to issue waivers on Iranian sanctions. That would be a major departure from the Trump administration’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign to exact financial punishments on Tehran, FT writes.
Ironically, during his time in office, ex-president, Barack Obama, followed a not-dissimilar approach to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table, throttling Iran’s economy with sanctions before pledging relief for talks. The negotiations resulted in the Iran nuclear deal that Trump called “rotten” and pulled the US out of last year.
While Trump has not agreed to anything yet, he did signal a willingness to cooperate on such a proposal at various times throughout the last month, including at the recent G7 meeting, according to four sources with knowledge of the president’s conversations about the deal.
Several sources told The Daily Beast that foreign officials are expecting Trump to either agree to cooperate on the French deal, or to offer to ease some sanctions on Tehran.
Meanwhile, Trump is also considering meeting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
“I do believe they’d like to make a deal. If they do, that’s great. And if they don’t, that’s great too,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
“But they have tremendous financial difficulty, and the sanctions are getting tougher and tougher.”
When asked if he would ease sanctions against Iran to get a meeting with Iran, Trump simply said, “We’ll see what happens. I think Iran has a tremendous, tremendous potential.”
Whether or not Trump follows through with supporting Macron is unclear, as he is known to consider or temporarily back high-profile domestic or foreign policy initiatives, only to quickly backtrack or about-face.