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Five Americans imprisoned in Iran are a step closer to coming home. A proposed agreement with Iran calls for the U.S. to hand over $6 billion in Iranian assets blocked under U.S. sanctions in exchange for the eventual return of five U.S. citizens who are now under house arrest.
Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan explains why this deal sounds like a win for the United States.
Excerpted from Peter’s Aug. 15 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
There’s finally a deal on the table between the U.S. and Iran that everyone can live with… it even looks like Israel has given it the green light. So what does this deal actually look like?
On the surface, this deal looks like the U.S. is getting back those American prisoners who were unjustly detained and releasing $6 billion of frozen Iranian funds. However, this isn’t just about a few people who got caught with dime bags; it’s about the broader relationship at hand.
We’re talking about Iran discontinuing funds being sent out to their militias, spinning down some of their enriched uranium, coming back under IAEA inspections, and in exchange, the U.S. will enable them to sell crude abroad.
In no way is this a done deal, but some factors are helping to push this along. The big one is the Russian sanctions’ impact on Iranian crude exports and the overall financial situation, which makes the $6 billion offer sound pretty appealing.
We could be looking at the most productive stage of American-Iranian relations since the 70s; all it cost the U.S. was $6 billion of someone else’s money. Sounds like a win to me.
