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All in News
◢ Oil cartel OPEC has "not much credit" left as some members are turning it into "a tool for the US", a senior Iranian official said in comments published Saturday. "Saudi Arabia and the UAE are turning OPEC into a tool for the US and consequently the organization has not much credit left," Iran's OPEC governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili told the Shana newswire, affiliated to Iran's Oil Ministry.
◢ Companies from dozens of countries are showing their wares at the Damascus International Fair this week, but those from two in particular are getting special treatment—Russia and Iran. Firms from the top two wartime allies of Syria's government are set up in an entirely separate building, hinting at the preferred status they hope to enjoy as the country tries to transition into reconstruction.
◢ President Donald Trump lashed out at former secretary of state John Kerry for his meetings with Iran's foreign minister after the Obama-appointee had left office. "John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people," Trump said on Twitter late Thursday.
◢ Germany, France and Britain are mulling setting up a new financial institution to allow EU trade with Iran to continue despite American sanctions renewed by US President Donald Trump, German media reported Friday. The three countries could set up a "Special Purpose Vehicle" (SPV)—a firm resembling a clearing house that would cut Tehran out of the financial loop while still allowing trade, news weekly Der Spiegel and business daily Handelsblatt reported.
◢ Global oil output hit a record of 100 million barrels per day in August, but the market may tighten and prices rise as exports from Iran and Venezuela decline, the International Energy Agency said Thursday. "We are entering a very crucial period for the oil market," the IEA said in its latest monthly report. "Things are tightening up."
◢ Iran faces a potentially crushing loss of oil exports when US sanctions return in November, but the impact could be blunted by its experience of working around embargoes. When Iran faced its toughest international sanctions between 2012 and 2015, analysts say it found a number of creative solutions, from repainting and renaming ships to switching off their tracking devices.
◢ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday accused European leaders of "appeasing" Iran instead of confronting its militant activity. Netanyahu's remarks, made in a cabinet meeting, feed into his ongoing efforts to sway world leaders to join the United States in upping pressure on Israel's arch foe through sanctions.
◢ For the last two weeks, around 50 trucks traveling to or from Tajikistan have lain stranded on the northern and southern borders of Turkmenistan in a standoff that defies immediate explanation. Senior transportation officials in Dushanbe have told Eurasianet on condition of anonymity that one working suspicion is that the blockade may have been instigated by Iran, which shares a long border with Turkmenistan.
◢ Iran's vice-president in charge of environmental affairs has called for an explanation on the fate of more than a dozen activists arrested this year, state news agency IRNA reported Sunday. “We are not asking for their release or for their execution, we just want their fate to be clarified. This is part of their citizenship rights," Isa Kalantari, who heads Iran's environment department, told IRNA.
◢ Iran's efforts to counter worsening dust storms have been hampered by conflict in the region, the deputy head of the environment department said on Saturday. "We signed agreements with the Iraqi and Syrian governments in 2010 and 2011 to help them counter the source of dust storms," Masoud Tajrishi told a news conference in Tehran.
◢ Iran's President Hassan Rouhani evoked memories of the devastating Iran-Iraq war on Saturday to call for unity in the face of economic hardships and US pressure. "Today, the government is on the front-lines. This is an economic, psychological and propoganda war," Rouhani said on state television. "We had sweet days and we had hard days during the sacred defense," he said, using the official name for the war with Iraq which claimed up to two million lives between 1980 and 1988.
◢ Iran's supreme leader on Thursday warned against the spread of pessimism in the country, as people face mounting economic woes after the imposition of US sanctions. Addressing the Assembly of Experts, an elected body of high-ranking clerics tasked with choosing the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for people's problems not to be overstated.
◢ President Donald Trump left the door open Wednesday to meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly—even as the United States ramps up the pressure on a regime it accuses of destabilizing the Middle East. "It's possible, anything is possible," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the possibility of a face-to-face with Rouhani during the gathering later this month.
◢ Iran will begin uranium enrichment beyond previous levels if the remaining parties fail to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal, its Atomic Energy Organisation told local media on Wednesday. "We will not return to previous levels if our counterparts leave the JCPOA (nuclear deal), but will instead reach even more advanced levels," the organization's spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.
◢ US President Donald Trump plans to lead a meeting of heads of state of the United Nations Security Council meeting on Iran in late September, his envoy Nikki Haley announced Tuesday. With the United States now holding the presidency of the Security Council, Haley said the aim is to further pressure on Tehran over its alleged violations of council resolutions.
◢ Iran is to move its main oil export terminal from the Persian Gulf to the Oman Sea, President Hassan Rouhani announced on Tuesday, sparing its tankers from using the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Rouhani said exports were already being shifted from the Kharg Island terminal, deep in the Persian Gulf, to Bandar-e-Jask in the Oman Sea and would be completed by the end of his term in 2021.
◢ The Iranian rial hit another all-time low against the US dollar on Monday in spite of central bank efforts to stem the decline. The rial has lost around 15 percent of its value on the open market in the past three days, bottoming at 128,500 to the dollar by Monday evening, according to Bonbast.com, which monitors Iran's rates.
◢ Iran's parliament called off a planned vote to impeach the education minister on Sunday, Iranian media reported, offering some respite for the embattled government of President Hassan Rouhani. Twenty-nine lawmakers signed a motion last Wednesday to impeach the minister, Mohammad Bathaei, but all of them withdrew their signatures.
◢ Iran is sticking to the terms of its nuclear deal with world powers, a UN atomic watchdog report showed Thursday, despite ongoing uncertainty over its future. The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that Iran was still complying with the key parameters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed in 2015 by Iran and the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.
◢ Iran "cannot avoid" talks on thorny issues like its ballistic missile program and role in Middle East conflicts, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned Thursday, as European powers work to rescue the beleaguered nuclear deal with Tehran. France, Germany and Britain are leading European efforts to save the landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear program, which was thrown into crisis in May when US President Donald Trump withdrew and reimposed sanctions.
