Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani whizzed around Rome and Paris this week with dozens of Iranian CEOs in tow, signing deals worth billions of dollars to export oil, overhaul his country’s airline fleet, manufacture cars, and more. On Thursday, Rouhani received a red-carpet greeting from President François Hollande and a trumpet blast of welcome at France’s Foreign Ministry before numerous signing ceremonies inking business contracts that will last for years.
The absence of U.S. businesses in this week’s business frenzy has been striking. The lightning round of deal-making comes just 10 days after the U.N. nuclear sanctions was lifted—the result of years of negotiations, ironically much of it led by U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
With U.S. sanctions relating to human rights violations and support of terrorism still in place, and Congress vowing to block any moves to lift them, America has put itself in a vacuum when it comes to dealing with Iran – and the Europeans are racing to fill it.
For European executives, it’s a rare moment to make rapid progress in a big market that still has clear potential to grow. With nearly 80 million people, many of them well educated, literate, and tech savvy, the business prospects seem huge. “For French businesses it is very important to start in Iran again,” says Philippe Gauthier, vice president of France’s business organization Medef, which hosted a daylong round of deal-making between Iranian and French executives. “It has been 10 years, and Iran is a very big country—by far the biggest in the Middle East.”
For Iranian businesses, the feeling is that the country cannot afford to wait for U.S. laws to change—something for which they believe American companies will pay the price. “The U.S. is losing a big market,” says Saeed Maghsoudi, managing director of the Tehran petrochemical company Namvaran P&T. Having traveled to Europe with Rouhani, he says he has renewed contact with companies he lost touch with through a decade of E.U. and U.S. sanction regimes, which steadily drove more and more Western businesses out of Iran, leaving the country increasingly isolated economically.
“If the U.S. wants to come back, we would be happy. But now they are losing,” Maghsoudi says. “We are a really big country that is safe, with no terrorism. The U.S. could use Iran as a place to do business in the whole region.”
Europe to U.S. on Iran: You Snooze, You Lose
The absence of U.S. businesses in this week’s business frenzy has been striking. The lightning round of deal-making comes just 10 days after the U.N. nuclear sanctions was lifted—the result of years of negotiations, ironically much of it led by U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
With U.S. sanctions relating to human rights violations and support of terrorism still in place, and Congress vowing to block any moves to lift them, America has put itself in a vacuum when it comes to dealing with Iran – and the Europeans are racing to fill it.
For European executives, it’s a rare moment to make rapid progress in a big market that still has clear potential to grow. With nearly 80 million people, many of them well educated, literate, and tech savvy, the business prospects seem huge. “For French businesses it is very important to start in Iran again,” says Philippe Gauthier, vice president of France’s business organization Medef, which hosted a daylong round of deal-making between Iranian and French executives. “It has been 10 years, and Iran is a very big country—by far the biggest in the Middle East.”
For Iranian businesses, the feeling is that the country cannot afford to wait for U.S. laws to change—something for which they believe American companies will pay the price. “The U.S. is losing a big market,” says Saeed Maghsoudi, managing director of the Tehran petrochemical company Namvaran P&T. Having traveled to Europe with Rouhani, he says he has renewed contact with companies he lost touch with through a decade of E.U. and U.S. sanction regimes, which steadily drove more and more Western businesses out of Iran, leaving the country increasingly isolated economically.
“If the U.S. wants to come back, we would be happy. But now they are losing,” Maghsoudi says. “We are a really big country that is safe, with no terrorism. The U.S. could use Iran as a place to do business in the whole region.”
Europe to U.S. on Iran: You Snooze, You Lose
