http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/middleeast/with-boeing-deal-americans-are-coming-to-iran.html 2016-09-22 20:45:22 With Boeing Deal, Americans Are Coming to Iran Boeing technicians, trainers and managers will be the first United States citizens in Iran since 1980, when all 140,000 Americans there were forced to leave. === TEHRAN — Long before the first newly purchased Boeing airliner lands at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, When the United States on Wednesday gave the green light for the direct sale of Western planes to Iran, much more than nearly four decades of sanctions on such deals came to an end. Not that the But the sale will have the important effect of ending an era of absolute isolation between the countries. Boeing will almost certainly have to open an administrative office in Tehran, and technicians will have to move here to train their Iranian counterparts in the care and maintenance of the planes. Among them, almost certainly, will be many Americans. That seems to be exactly what the United States had in mind in approving the deal, Iranian analysts say. The deal not only allows President Hassan Rouhani to show a tangible gain from warming relations with the West, but also moves Iran that much closer to his ultimate goal of normalization of relations with the United States. “Once this deal is a fact it will be much harder for the hard-liners to try to prevent relations with the United States,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political activist who supports Mr. Rouhani. “Nobody can deny that with the planes, people and know-how will enter Iran.” Buying planes from the United States, opening a Boeing office or having American representatives at an international airport might seem insignificant. But it would represent a tectonic shift in relations. In 1980, when ties between the countries were severed, all 140,000 Americans living in Iran were forced to leave. The United States Embassy was turned into an ideological museum and all American businesses left over the years, as sanctions made commerce increasingly difficult, and more recently, impossible. The bureaus of The New York Times, Bloomberg and some other news media organizations were long the only official American entities allowed to operate in Iran, either by the Iranian authorities or under United States sanctions. When Conoco won an Many Iranians hope the January Hatred of the United States was the ideological bedrock of the Islamic republic, however, and there are strong forces dedicated to keeping it that way. Police officers some months ago closed down a knockoff Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant after hard-liners protested, saying the chicken wings were a symbol of westernization. When someone tried to open a McDonald’s franchise here 20 years ago, it took just two days for the restaurant to be burned down. And there are still many sources of tension, particularly “No, we should not have relations,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a conservative political analyst. “We hard-liners also want safe planes. But we need to keep our independence and distance from the United States. That is one of the pillars of our ideology.”