With the United States and Iran having held five rounds of talks on potentially striking a new nuclear agreement, one key incentive being touted by Tehran is the prospect of opening the Islamic Republic to large-scale investment.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who represents his nation at the negotiating table, has specifically discussed how “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts are up for grabs” in Iran’s nuclear sector. He described it as a market “big enough to revitalize the struggling nuclear industry in the United States.”
This proposal comes at a time when the Trump administration is pursuing a so-called “nuclear renaissance” aimed at reinvigorating U.S. nuclear energy. Just last Friday, as talks were underway in Rome, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to boost domestic nuclear development.
But given the uncertainty surrounding the White House’s position as to whether it would allow Iran to pursue any level of uranium enrichment, the question persists: Could U.S. companies feasibly bring their business to the long-sanctioned Islamic Republic?
“The answer is yes,” Frank Rose, who served as deputy head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration under former President Joe Biden, told Newsweek.
Yet, he acknowledged that such a breakthrough would require a creative approach to overcome decades of deep-seated mistrust and hostility between the two nations.
A Grand Nuclear Bargain
Ironically, the U.S. played an often-overlooked role in supporting the foundation for what would become Iran’s nuclear program. Months after the 1953 CIA-backed coup that brought Iran’s pro-Western shah back to power, President Dwight D. Eisenhower paved the way for the “Atoms for Peace” initiative that later saw Washington provide Tehran with nuclear technology and training.
This Cold War-era cooperation ramped up in the 1960s and 1970s until being abruptly cut in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution that ousted the shah and put in place the nation’s current Islamist government. Since then, successive White House administrations have imposed a cascade of sanctions that have largely prevented most forms of U.S. commerce in the Islamic Republic.
A brief thaw came with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which offered sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear activity. Corporations such as Boeing, General Electric and Honeywell all struck deals to begin providing services in Iran, albeit in a relatively minor fashion given existing restrictions and hesitation over ongoing debates surrounding the accord.
Suspicions as to whether the deal would last were realized with Trump’s decision to abandon the JCPOA in 2018, once again sealing off the Islamic Republic from U.S. commerce. To this day, the U.S. leader has railed against the agreement reached under former President Barack Obama and criticized Biden’s efforts to revive it.
Now, amid the latest talks toward a possible new agreement, debate continues to play out over what a better deal that could be accepted both sides would look like.
One proposal reportedly floated by Iranian officials has been that of a regional consortium, a unique arrangement that would see Iran enter into a nuclear fuel sharing group with other Middle Eastern nations, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE currently operates a nuclear power plant but does not enrich its own uranium, part of a “123 Agreement” reached with the U.S. in 2009, while Saudi Arabia is currently looking to develop a civil nuclear industry with U.S. support. Such discussions took place during Trump’s recent trip to the kingdom that produced a series of deals, though notably not yet on the nuclear issue.
“I think that would be a creative way to do it,” Rose said of the consortium proposal. “You find a third party, maybe in the UAE, I know we have the 123 Agreement, but you bring in the Saudis, you bring in the Emiratis, you bring in the Iranians, and you enrich civilian grade. You don’t do it in Iran. You find some third country.”
Once skeptical, if not outright opposed, to the JCPOA, Saudi Arabia and the UAE “have made it clear they want the deal,” Rose said. Trump’s stated alternative, military action, could prove devastating for their economies and regional stability.
The participation of Arab partners may also shore up confidence for U.S. companies considering investment in Iran. Without a regional element, Rose felt that the prospect of U.S. companies flocking to Iran, particularly given the experience of the JCPOA’s downfall, may “be a bridge too far.”
At the same time, the president is in a powerful domestic position, affording him a broader mandate than his predecessor to come up with a solution to the Iran nuclear issue. Rose argued that “Trump has the ability to things that Biden did not have the flexibility politically in the United States to do.”
“If you put your thinking cap on, there is a way to skin this cat,” Rose said. “But it seems like at the political level, the big challenge is this Iranian desire to continue to maintain the ability to enrich in Iran. Could the hopes of getting a deal possibly transcend that? Absolutely.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the embassies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the U.S. and the White House for comment.
Overcoming Obstacles
The potentially lucrative nature of U.S.-Iran business ties has been highlighted by former Iranian officials as well, including Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who previously served on Iran’s nuclear negotiations team from 2003–2005. He told Newsweek last month that “a multi-trillion-dollar economic agreement” could “truly transform Iran–U.S. relations” and “sweep away the problems between them like a massive flood.”
Yet even with Trump’s unmatched command over conservative politics in the U.S., navigating the challenges associated with reshaping perceptions over doing business with Iran could prove treacherous. As such, enthusiasm in Iran remains muted.
“Donald Trump has long emphasized his vision of transforming the United States into the world’s foremost magnet for foreign investment,” Mehdi Kharratiyan, head of the Institute for Revival of Politics think tank in Tehran, told Newsweek. “Within that framework, the notion of outbound U.S. investment in a high-risk and geopolitically sensitive environment like Iran is unlikely to gain traction.”
“Even in the hypothetical scenario of presidential approval,” he added, “U.S. companies would remain highly cautious due to the complex business environment in Iran, which includes legal and financial risks.”
There’s also the matter of Israel, widely believed to be the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons capabilities despite an official policy of strategic ambiguity.
While the quest for a renewed U.S.-Iran nuclear deal has been met with skepticism within Washington as well, Israel has been perhaps the most vocal party to temper expectations, potentially contributing to a growing rift between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
During their most recent meeting in the White House last month, Netanyahu lent his support for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program “the way it was done in Libya.” Trump previously rejected the so-called “Libya model” mentioned by then-national security adviser John Bolton amid nuclear talks with North Korea during his first administration, going as far as to blame Bolton for sabotaging the negotiations.
It’s one of several issued that have prompted reports of a divide between Trump and Netanyahu
Both U.S. and Israeli officials have downplayed such reports, however, and many in Iran continue to lay blame on Israel and pro-Israel interest groups for exerting influence that could ultimately lead to negotiations with Iran unraveling, much like they did with North Korea.
“If not for fundamental political constraints and the influence of pro-Israel lobbying, reaching a new deal would not be inherently difficult,” Kharratiyan said. “Tehran seeks the lifting of sanctions, while Washington is looking for stricter limitations than those outlined in the original JCPOA.”
“In theory, a compromise—possibly involving international oversight or a multilateral consortium for enrichment—could satisfy both parties,” he added.
But whether Iran would truly reap the rewards or instead once again be faced with a costly reversal from the U.S. continues to be the source of skepticism in the Islamic Republic.
“Even if a formal agreement is reached, Iranian officials are uncertain whether it would yield actual economic benefits or if the country would be shielded from joint Israeli-American covert actions,” Kharratiyan said. “Should Iran agree to a consortium model, it remains unclear whether such an arrangement would enjoy durability or stability under mounting Israeli—and potentially American—pressure.”
Complex regional dynamics between Iran and its Arab neighbors also factor into the equation. After years of hostility, Iran and Saudi Arabia reestablished ties in a 2023 deal mediated by China, but geopolitical competition continues, and their relationship is further tested by Israel’s endeavor to expand the Abraham Accords by normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.
Any consortium arrangement including Saudi Arabia that also involved the kingdom establishing ties with Israel, a long-held hope for both the U.S. and Israel, “would amount to a de facto acknowledgment of a regional order Tehran has long opposed,” according to Kharratiyan.
Gary Samore, director of Brandeis University’s Center for Middle East Studies who previously served as a senior National Security Council official tasked with nuclear policy, also had doubts as to whether a regional consortium could break the negotiations deadlock. He pointed to Araghchi’s insistence on enrichment taking place on Iranian territory, even within a hypothetical fuel sharing framework.
“The problem with the nuclear fuel consortium is location, location, location,” Samore told Newsweek. “The Iranians want to host the enrichment plant on their soil and the Saudis want to host it on their soil. So, I think it will go nowhere.”
Still, some groups such as Princeton University‘s Program on Science and Global Security, strive toward finding the kind of workaround that Rose explored.
Frank von Hippel, a former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy national security official who now codirects the Princeton University program, told Newsweek that his team is “currently writing a paper in which the enrichment would be carried out in a state other than Iran or Saudi Arabia.”
“The centrifuges could be made in Iran,” von Hippel said, “but the enrichment would be carried out in a smaller country without nuclear-weapons ambitions.”
A New Atomic Era
As Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations such as Egypt and Turkey—both of which are cooperating with Russia—increasingly eye nuclear energy, Trump’s desire to seek nuclear solutions at home looks to recall a past era in which the U.S. envisioned a nuclear future.
The same “Atoms for Peace” campaign that ultimately allowed Iran to acquire the initial infrastructure and knowledge to establish its nuclear program decades ago also resulted in the first major push for nuclear power in the U.S. Oil shocks, including one accompanying the 1979 Islamic Revolution that set the stage for Washington and Tehran’s rivalry, helped to further promote nuclear projects.
By the 1990s, however, the nuclear rush had begun to fade, with dozens of plants canceled nationwide. A brief attempt to revive the nuclear industry was undertaken under the Obama administration, but the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, the worst nuclear incident since the 1987 Chernobyl explosion in the Soviet Union, tempered hopes for a nuclear resurgence.
As von Hippel pointed out, “the last two large reactors built in the U.S. (Vogtle 3 & 4 in Georgia, 1,117 Megawatts-electric) cost about $15 billion each, which brought the construction of large reactors in the U.S. to an end.” Thus far, efforts to invest in smaller-scale solutions, while promising, have yet to gain sufficient traction to spark another wave of nuclear production.
Today, the U.S. still leads the world in overall nuclear power output, but the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power is just around 18-20 percent, far below a number of other nations, including France, Slovakia and Ukraine, for which nuclear power is the largest source of electricity production.
As for Iran, nuclear energy accounts for just around 1 percent of electricity generation, which still predominantly derives from oil and gas. The hydrocarbon dominance comes despite orders to expand the role of nuclear energy from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has also officially banned the production of nuclear weapons in the Islamic Republic.
James Hansen, who directs the program on climate science, awareness and solutions at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, argued that the U.S. was well-placed to help usher in a new era of global nuclear energy investment, one with the potential to both bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East and simultaneously help the region ween off its dependence on fossil fuels.
“The best hope of peace in the Middle East, a result with global benefits, is an agreement among the major players there that includes cooperation that raises living standards of the poorer countries,” Hansen told Newsweek. “There is much less chance of large-scale conflict, if living standards are rising and there is mutual dependence. If this involves development of energy that helps phase down long-term dependence on fossil fuels, it would also address the long-term climate problem. Renewable energies alone are inadequate for that purpose.”
“The United States still has enormous potential to develop the most advanced, ultrasafe technology for peaceful use of nuclear power, which the current Administration wisely supports,” he added. “It would be remarkable if the present political chaos led to progress that addressed both the long-standing Middle East and climate/energy problems.”
As for those continuing to advocate for a U.S. foreign policy approach marked by open-ended sanctions and ever mounting tensions, Hansen argued this strategy “seldom, if ever, works,” even if it kept the likes of Iran, Cuba and others as “semipermanent enemies” and satisfied the whims of some voices in high circles.
“Maybe the military-industrial-congressional complex doesn’t mind that policy and result,” Hansen said, “but I don’t think the public supports it.”
Rather, he looked to another model, one he credited to President John F. Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower and expanded upon his peaceful nuclear vision. Among Kennedy’s most defining moments on this issue came in August 1963, a year after the Cuban missile crisis and just months before his assassination, when he signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union.
Trump, who chose Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as secretary of health and human services, has sometimes been compared to the slain U.S. leader over their shared track record of challenging influential voices in Washington.
By channeling Kennedy, who Hansen referred to as one of the few “politicians to recognize the foolishness in this long-standing bipartisan approach” of eschewing engagement with adversaries, Trump may be poised to strike a historic agreement to boost his own legacy.
Coming to Terms
But whether or not Trump may be able to successfully secure such a deal may hinge most critically on whether or not his administration can accept some level of enrichment in Iran, whose officials have repeatedly rejected any offer that would restrict such practice altogether in the Islamic Republic.
While Trump and his team, including his special envoy for the Middle East and lead nuclear negotiator, Steve Witkoff, have increasingly signaled that the White House was leaning toward restricting all Iranian enrichment, the ongoing progress of talks indicates both sides continue to seek ways in which they could conceivably bridge the gap.
“I don’t think Iran is going to abandon enrichment, but it’s possible that some face-saving compromise can be found for Trump like an enrichment ‘pause’ that allows him to claim that Iran stopped enrichment,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Newsweek.
“It seems like the Iranians have concluded that emoluments are the best strategy for getting sanctions lifted,” he added. “We’ll see if they’re correct.”
Ultimately, Lewis argued, that a successful agreement, not unlike the one reached a decade ago, remained the optimal path toward supporting the interests of both countries by preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb and offering incentives in the form of economic relief.
“At the end of the day,” Lewis said, “the best way to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon is the same as it was when the Obama Administration agreed to the JCPOA—lifting sanctions in exchange for better safeguards on Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.”
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