When the United States and its negotiating partners offered last month to sell spare aircraft parts to Iran in return for nuclear concessions, they were dangling a carrot almost as old as much of Iran’s civilian airline fleet.

Spare parts have been a perennial US offer to induce Iran to change its ways — or to reward it for positive steps — and were almost provided 20 years ago near the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, Al-Monitor has learned.

According to Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush, the administration’s various departments recommended in late 1992 to allow such sales for Iran’s vintage Boeings but left the final decision to the incoming Bill Clinton administration.

“There was an interagency proposal at the end of the Bush 41 administration to lift sanctions on selling Iran spare parts for its Boeing civilian airliners, crop-duster planes and certain kinds of trucks,” Scowcroft told Al-Monitor. “But in the last days of the Bush 41 administration, I concluded it would be more appropriate to leave the decision to the incoming Clinton administration.”