Soon after the US Treasury Department granted licenses to Boeing and Airbus to sell passenger planes to Iran, Tehran welcomed the move as a fulfillment of American obligations under the nuclear deal. On Sept. 24, three days after the licenses were issued, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed that Iran had received the green light to purchase 80 out of the 88 aircraft it had sought to buy from Boeing, adding, “Out of 118 Airbus jetliners, the license for selling 17 has been issued.”

Airbus and Boeing had previously agreed to sell or lease more than 200 passenger planes to Iran, which has sought to revamp its aging air fleet after the signing of the July 14, 2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). After the formal Jan. 16 Implementation Day of the nuclear deal, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued documents declaring that all US institutions wishing to sell or lease aircraft, spare parts or maintenance and safety services to Iran could apply for licenses on a case-by-case basis. OFAC guidelines further stipulated that non-US institutions also need licenses for selling and leasing aircraft to Iran if more than 10% of the components of their products are American made.

Beyond the issue of securing licenses to sell the aircraft is the challenge of financing the deals. Hinting at this problem, Zarif told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York Sept. 23, “The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control … tells international banks that it’s OK to do business with Iran but — and the buts and ifs are so long — I mean there is one sentence that it is OK to do business with Iran and five pages of ifs and buts. So at the end of the day, these banks say we will take the safe road. We will forget about Iran. And that has been the outcome. No major European bank has started doing business with Iran now, eight months after the deal. And we believe that’s a shortcoming.”

According to what has been reported so far, the Boeing and Airbus passenger planes are not going to be bought in cash but rather financed. In practice, this means that Iran will buy the aircraft with loans and will repay the debt through revenue generated from operating the planes. Thus, not only is a bank or other financial institution needed to make the deal happen, but the loans must be long term. The broader implication is that if Iran is able to purchase aircraft through external financing, it could also do so with regard to other projects.