Sensing a Deal on Sanctions, Iran Is Bullish

TEHRAN — The text message, received as the deadline for nuclear talks was expiring, gave Fatemeh Moghimi a thrill she had been waiting years to feel. “The deal,” it read, “was done.”

It took Ms. Moghimi, the owner of a leading trucking company, a second to absorb the news. When she did, she recalled recently in her Tehran office, she fairly screamed to herself, “We’re in business!”

As it turned out, the message was a bad joke, and instead the nuclear negotiations were extended for seven more months — bad news for Iran’s battered, inflation-ridden economy. But Ms. Moghimi was unfazed. “I’m not giving up hope,” she said with a smile. “It is going to be over soon. It is as if the sun is peeking through the clouds after a terrible rainstorm.”

Ms. Moghimi’s unyielding optimism, shared by many top businesspeople here, was dented briefly last month when nuclear negotiators agreed to a second extension of the talks without even a framework for further negotiations. But it is almost an article of faith in business circles that the latest extension is only the postponement of an inevitable thaw between Iran and the rest of the world.

“The world needs this deal; we need this deal,” Ms. Moghimi said. “It will happen.”

Both moderates and conservatives have expressed concerns about the unchecked rise in expectations, among the public as well as among elite business classes, that a deal will be cinched. They have been warning that the enthusiasm could turn to bitter disappointment if the negotiations, set to resume in Geneva next week, should fail, possibly touching off unrest or what some clerics call “another sedition,” a reference to the revolt that followed disputed presidential elections in 2009.

“The prospect of a better future is enough to make them forget their problems for now,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst. “Later, we will see if that state of mind will prove to be costly for us.”

The confidence is beginning to take on a life of its own, with executives in the major export industries — oil and gas, transportation and carpets — feverishly preparing for what they envision as gloriously prosperous days ahead. Meeting with foreign businesspeople at the conferences that are springing up regularly in Tehran, they are knocking out memorandums of understanding and other nonbinding agreements and even some contracts — all with caveats saying sanctions must be lifted first.

“I have signed contracts with Europeans and Arabs to design five refineries,” said Mohammad Javad Hassannejad, the chief executive of an oil and gas consultancy, Petrosadian. He said the contracts were potentially worth many millions of dollars for his company and would inject billions of dollars into the stagnant Iranian economy.

“Spirits are high,” he said. “There is growing confidence. After the deal we will witness an unbelievable boom.”

In the coming months Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce is organizing an international conference for foreign investors, Ms. Moghimi explained between phone calls, sitting behind her desk.

NYTimes.com