France pushes $15b credit line plan for Iran, if US allows it

PARIS/DUBAI: France has proposed offering Iran about $15 billion in credit lines until year-end if Tehran comes fully back into compliance with its 2015 nuclear deal, a move that hinges on Washington not blocking it, Western and Iranian sources said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said talks on the credit arrangement, which would be guaranteed by Iranian oil revenues, were continuing, but US approval would be crucial, a British wire service reported.

The idea is “to exchange a credit line guaranteed by oil in return for, one, a return to the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal)...and two, security in the Gulf and the opening of negotiations on regional security and a post-2025 (nuclear program),” le Drian told reporters. “All this (pre)supposes that President Trump issues waivers.”

European leaders have struggled to dampen brewing confrontation between Tehran and Washington since US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal, which assures Iran access to world trade in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran last year and tightened them sharply this year. Iran has responded by breaching some of the limits on nuclear material in the deal, and has set a deadline for this week to take further steps.

French President Emmanuel Macron has spent the summer trying to create conditions that would bring the sides back to the negotiating table. At a G7 meeting in France last month, Trump appeared open to the idea of credit lines, though US officials later ruled out lifting sanctions as a condition for new talks.

An Iranian delegation was in Paris on Tuesday, including oil and finance officials, for talks to fine-tune details of credit lines that would give Iran some respite from sanctions that have crippled its economy and cut off its oil exports.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire will be in Washington today in part to discuss the credit mechanism. One diplomat said that might be when the United States gives its response to French proposals.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday the Islamic Republic would never hold bilateral talks with the United States - the two have had no diplomatic relations for four decades - but said that if all U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted, Washington could join multilateral talks between Tehran and the other parties to the 2015 pact.

The Trump administration says the nuclear deal is deficient as many of its terms expire after a decade and it does not cover non-nuclear issues such as Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support of proxy forces around the Middle East.

Tehran has called on the Europeans to accelerate their efforts to alleviate the impact of US sanctions. Rouhani stressed on Tuesday that Iran would take its next step in scaling back its nuclear commitments by Thursday unless the Europeans keep their promises to salvage the deal.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), said on Tuesday that Iran was capable of resuming enrichment of uranium to 20% fissile purity within two days. Twenty percent purity is considered an important intermediate stage on the road to producing the 90% pure fissile uranium needed for an atomic bomb.