TEHRAN — President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is racing to sign as many oil deals with Western companies as he can before hard-liners at home and President-elect Donald J. Trump have a chance to return the Mideast country to cultural and economic isolation. At the same time, Iran is in a battle with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC producers to reclaim its position as one of the world’s leading oil exporters, a spot it lost during the years of international sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran’s oil industry, the lifeblood of its economy, was devastated by the cumulative impact of the nuclear sanctions, which halved petroleum exports and left the country ostracized economically. The international nuclear agreement that lifted those sanctions nearly a year ago, one of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiatives, has enabled Iran to partly recover.
To access the complete article, please use this link: The New York Times