The Trump administration has touted its interim agreement with Iran as a financial boon for American farmers, claiming that billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets will be used to purchase US agricultural products. However, Iranian officials have flatly denied that such a condition exists, and sanctions experts remain skeptical about how the mechanism would work.
Interim Deal Details
A tentative agreement reached last week aims to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to resume oil sales freely during a 60-day negotiation period. The memorandum of understanding also promises to unfreeze Iranian assets held in escrow accounts under US sanctions.
Critics have lambasted the deal for failing to address the original reasons President Trump cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program, and its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
Trump's Claim of Farmer Payday
On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that the US Treasury would release Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the USA., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.” Vice President JD Vance, who discussed the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, echoed this stance.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei countered that any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,” not dictated by Washington. “It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said. Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also rejected Vance’s assertion that the US and Qatar would control how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
Expert Skepticism
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, noted that Iran’s major food suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkiye, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Argentina. He said Trump’s demand would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.” Under previous sanctions, the US required that money from countries importing Iranian oil or electricity be locked in escrow and released only for “non-sanctionable” items like food and medicine. On Monday, the US Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals, and petroleum products through Aug. 21 without mentioning escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated Iran pressure in the first Trump administration, said he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying US agricultural products.” Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, questioned whether the US could force banks to comply. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a US bank to buy soybeans or whatever,” he said, but added that banks may refuse, and the US could then sanction them. However, he noted it’s rare for the US to treat national security issues as “a cash grab.”
