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Iran opens ‘trillion dollar’ market to US: Bloomberg
With talks showing signs of progress, top Iranian officials are for the first time in decades overtly promoting their economy to the White House.
Tehran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last week that a new nuclear deal could give US 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.
Transforming the US-Iran relationship from one of hostility to one of economic cooperation has the potential to help resolve a conflict that’s kept Middle East security fragile for decades.
Araghchi said his country’s nuclear program itself could become a target for US 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 US,” he said in separate remarks on X last week.
A US 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 US 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.”
Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has also said he sees no reason why American investors shouldn’t spend their money in the Islamic Republic, according to President Masoud Pezeshkian.