European capital begins to flow into Iran

In August 2026 alone, Iran’s foreign investment committee approved 43 foreign investments, valued at a total $220 million.

By Shay Khatiri, Middle East Forum

On August 20, 2026, the Islamic Republic News Agency cited Morteza Zakerian, the general director for economic affairs of South Khorasan province, to report that a Spanish national had received approval to invest in the Iranian mining industry.

The report came just before U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an “economic D-Day,” which turned out to be a package of secondary sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s high reserves of natural and human resources and low capital, further set back by the war, can make it an attractive investment destination.

According to Zakerian, the investment will focus on extracting and processing mining deposits.

He added that investors from the Emirates, Oman, and Turkey have also brought capital into the province since the end of the recent conflict.

He said that “recently, there have been contacts with [Spain’s] embassy, and the embassy’s trade office has expressed exceeding interest in cooperation.”

He added that Tehran will ask Madrid to assist with finding other European investors.

Iran understands the need for foreign capital. On August 16, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that the government was considering deregulating foreign investments.

Under the new initiative, there will be consulting agencies that will seek foreign investors and help with permit applications.

In August 2026 alone, Iran’s foreign investment committee approved 43 foreign investments, valued at a total $220 million, from citizens of Russia, China, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Belarus, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iranians in the diaspora

In the current Iranian fiscal year, which began March 21, 2026, the committee has approved approximately 250 foreign investments, valued at a combined $2 billion.

This is not new. Angela Merkel’s administration in Germany failed to stop German companies from violating U.S. sanctions in the 2000s.

More recently, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany established the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) in 2019, a special purpose vehicle, to circumvent U.S. sanctions after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reimposed sanctions.

Iranian banks were disconnected from SWIFT in 2018, and INSTEX was a way to trade with Iran outside of SWIFT with alternative currencies to the U.S. dollar. The project collapsed in 2023 after “continued obstruction from Iran.”

The current Spanish government is the biggest antagonist in Europe to the United States, but it is not the only one.

With the trans-Atlantic diplomatic relations at a low point, the administration should beware that more European governments might violate U.S. sanctions or turn a blind eye on European nationals who do so.

The Islamic Republic owes its extended life in part to the “construction era” under President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani between 1988 and 1996.

The Iranian economy grew steadily, and the country recovered from the Iran-Iraq war.

Iran used its new wealth to buy popular legitimacy and used it in the 2000s to expand the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for both domestic control and regional expansion.

That was possible because Iran was still not under secondary sanctions.

Estimates vary, but Iran has lost about half of its pre-war gross domestic product because of the most recent war.

Preventing another construction era is key to bringing the Islamic Republic down, and preventing the flow of capital into Iran is key to that.

This requires a combination of increased investment in the Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to find violators and leaning on allies and partners to enforce U.S. sanctions.