Boeing accepts Trump’s decision

WASHINGTON — The chief executive of the aerospace giant Boeing downplayed the fallout from the president’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear pact, saying Wednesday that the company would abide by the Trump administration’s decision to cancel Boeing’s licenses to sell $20 billion of aircraft to Iran.

“We will continue to follow the U.S. government’s lead,” Dennis A. Muilenburg, the chief executive, told a luncheon crowd at the Economic Club of Washington.

Muilenburg spoke a day after the administration said Boeing would see its $20 billion contract to supply aircraft to Iran terminated because of the United States’ withdrawal from the nuclear deal, thus restoring stringent sanctions it had imposed previously. Boeing’s rival, Airbus, will also lose its license to sell to Iran, administration officials said.

Boeing agreed to sell 80 passenger jets to Iran Air for about $17 billion in 2016, but it never began building the planes or factored them in as future revenue. Airbus, on the other hand, already sent Iran three planes and booked the $19 billion Iran Air order for 100 new planes as a part of its backlog.

Scrapping the Iran deal may end up boosting Boeing, analysts said, since tensions in the Middle East inflate demand for the fighter jets, attack helicopters, bombs and missiles that Boeing produces.

Trump’s escalating standoff with China and tariffs the administration has levied on imported steel and aluminum has put the company in a more-perilous situation. Boeing sells about 70 percent of its commercial aircraft abroad, and it would stand to lose heavily if Chinese officials limit American companies’ access to their fast-growing aircraft market.