TEL AVIV – While President Obama downplayed the impact of frozen assets Iran will receive under sanctions relief, European and Asian companies are already discussing up to $29 billion in potential mining investments in Iran once they get the go-ahead.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new business deals set to flood Iran's economy, with the total amount of new investments clearly poised to dwarf the $56 billion Obama says Iran will get from unfrozen assets.
Prime Minister Benjamin Nenantahu places the total at closer to $150 billion in unfrozen assets. Yet even that number pales in comparison to the international deals coming Iran's way.
"Companies looking to invest don't want to be identified until sanctions are removed," Mehdi Karbasian, deputy minister of Iran's Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade, told Bloomberg news agency of those firms interested in new mining contracts.
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Karbasian described the $29 billion of mining investments in projects ranging from steel to aluminum production, gold mining and copper.
This while Germany car companies Volkswagen and Skoda discuss plans to reenter the Iranian automotive market after almost a five-year absence.
Germany's Minister for the Economy, Sigmar Gabriel, told the media that German companies were eager to return to Iranian industries, including water, electricity and energy.
"Germany is trying hard to help remove the anti-Iran sanctions and the government is negotiating with German banks," he added.
Indeed, just after the Vienna agreement was signed last month, senior Iranian government officials boasted to the country’s semi-official Fars news agency that "huge" investment sums will be "funneled" into their country.
Fars reported Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht "said that after the end of the nuclear negotiations, huge sums will flow to the Iranian market from three conduits, namely unfrozen assets in other countries which will be deposited in the Central Bank, increase in oil and gas exports, and boost in domestic and foreign investments."
What's next? Find out in "Showdown with Nuclear Iran."
Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Abbas Akhoundi, minister of Roads and Urban Development, explaining the preparations underway to handle what he said would likely be a major increase in international travel to and from Iran.
Akhoundi said the nuclear deal will enable Iran to modernize marine, aerial and rail transport and purchase new passenger planes.
He called on worldwide airlines to resume flights to his country following years of international isolation.
Bloomberg reported last month the nuclear agreement will provide Iran funds to start replacing what the news outlet described as "hundreds of museum-vintage jumbo jets" with modern passenger aircraft in deals that could total at least $20 billion.
"There's no doubt there is huge potential, especially for Airbus and Boeing, to sell a large number of planes," Adam Pilarski, an economist and senior vice president with Avitas Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based aerospace consultant, told Bloomberg.
One day before the deal was signed, WND reported Iran's biggest oil-shipping company, which boasts the world's largest fleet of super tankers, was already preparing to return to European and international markets in the wake of any agreement in Vienna.
At the same time, clearly anticipating massive sanctions relief, Iranian companies last month signed a $2.3 billion agreement to construct 800 miles of pipelines, which Iran has identified as its most critical conduit for future gas exports to Europe.
IRNA, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, quoted a top official from the National Iranian Tankers Company, or NITC, saying Iranian tankers will return to European and international markets as soon as possible after sanctions are scaled back with the signing of a deal.
The NITC is a subsidiary of the privatized National Iranian Oil Company. It transports Iranian crude to international markers.
The company owns 42 large crude carriers, or VLCCs, which can each carry about two million barrels of oil.
"No other company in the world owns that number of VLCCs," Nasrollah Sardashti, NITC's commercial director, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview earlier this month.
If the NITC can operate unrestrained, it would allow Iran to offer competitive prices that could rival or even trump deliveries from other Persian Gulf countries.
Iran's ISNA, a news organization run by Iranian university students, reported on the $2.3 billion deal to build the Iran Gas Trunkline-6, which will transit Iraq and Turkey to ultimately deliver gas to Europe from the country's massive South Pars field.
The pipeline will also deliver gas to Iraq, including for the supply of a power station there.
The contracts were signed by the Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company and Pasargad Energy Development Company, reported ISNA.
In April, WND was first to report Iran was in the process of negotiating oil deals to take effect as soon as sanctions are removed with the signing of a final nuclear deal with the West.
This is according to Iran's foe, Saudi Arabia, which transferred an intelligence report to the U.S. on the matter, a Saudi official with knowledge of the dossier told WND at the time.
The official said that during a meeting in April, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani discussed with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani the sale of discounted oil to Afghanistan after the international sanctions are removed.