THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Iran and Europe understand that the agreement is the effective end of sanctions and are preparing to return to business as usual.

During the past decade, well-connected Iranian investors amassed undervalued assets in poorly executed and frequently corrupt rounds of privatization, buying insurance companies, hospitals, refineries and public utilities, among other things previously run — usually poorly — by the state.

But with Western sanctions putting an ever-tightening stranglehold on the Iranian economy, finding buyers for the assets became next to impossible, especially in recent years. In the absence of outside investors, and no deep-pocketed private buyers in the country, Iranian investment companies fronting for state pension funds, military cooperatives and religious foundations bounced shares back and forth on the Tehran Stock Exchange just to make small profits.

“They had no one to sell to inside Iran but now, with the nuclear deal done, everything is falling into place,” said one well-established Iranian-American consultant who asked to remain anonymous because his business activities are punishable under United States law as long as sanctions remain in place. “A lot of people here have started pulling out their calculators.”

The potential sell-off began to take shape in July, as the nuclear agreement began to move toward a conclusion, economists say. That was when the Etemad-e-Mobin investment company, part of a cooperative fund belonging to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, put the Telecommunication Company of Iran on the selling block.

The fund’s chief executive officer, Mostafa Seyyed Hashemi, told the Tabnak website that bidding for the company — which Iranian news media reported was acquired after Etemad-e-Mobin’s strongest competitor was barred from the auction — would start at the $7.8 billion it paid in 2009.

That the company could put itself up for sale to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic, might seem impossible in a country founded on an anti-Western revolutionary ideology. However, a law passed with little fanfare in 2002 and mostly forgotten since then as sanctions and anti-Western feelings piled up practically rolls out the red carpet for foreign buyers.

If the Republicans do get around to saying NO to the Iran deal, it will just be so much pissing into the wind. And once again the rest of the world will be passing us by as we sit mired in the glue of failed Republican ideology.