Could American Ag Products Be Bound For Iran?

Before Vice President J.D. Vance left Switzerland to return home to the United States Monday, he held an 11-minute press conference about the weekend negotiations with the Iranians.  During that press conference, Vance talked about frozen financial assets and American farmers, saying the Trump Administration wanted to make sure if the U.S. were to unfreeze that money that the funds would benefit the people of Iran.

“Jared Kushner actually came up with a very interesting solution with the Qataris, where basically, again, if there are any frozen Iranian assets that are unfrozen, then we have approval over that process, the Qataris have approval over that process, and then the money would actually go to buy American soy, American corn, and American wheat,” Vance said.

The Vice President called the plan a "classic Trump deal".

“Where, if Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they're going to go to make American farmers richer and to feed the Iranian people.” 

Vance's comments, you'd notice, were filled with many ifs that would need to be met before any grain movement from the U.S. to Iran were to take place.

Iran's annual agricultural imports of those three commodities amount to about 350 million bushels of corn and 80 million bushels of soybeans, both mostly from South America (Brazil and Argentina), and 140 million bushels of Russian wheat.

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