Before Vice President J.D. Vance left Switzerland for the United States on Monday, he held an 11-minute press conference about the weekend negotiations with the Iranians. He wrapped it up with some comments about frozen financial assets and American farmers, saying the Trump Administration wanted to make sure if it were to unfreeze that money that the dollars 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.”
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.”
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. Vance’s comments, as you heard, 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.