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All in News
◢ President Hassan Rouhani vowed Monday that Iran would respond to an attack on one of its oil tankers in the Red Sea. “This wasn’t a terrorist move, nor was it carried out by an individual. It was carried out by a government,” Rouhani said, adding that officials were also assessing rocket fragments.
◢ Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Iran on Sunday on a mission to act as a "facilitator" between Tehran and Riyadh and try to defuse rising tensions in the Persian Gulf. "The reason for this trip is that we do not want a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran," Khan told reporters as he stood alongside Rouhani.
◢ Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pitched the Islamic Republic's Persian Gulf security plan to neighboring nations on Thursday. Zarif said that the plan, named Hormuz Peace Endeavor, offered the chance of "expansive security" and cooperation between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
◢ China plans to ask the U.S. to lift sanctions on its biggest shipping company at high-level trade negotiations in Washington this week, people familiar with the matter said. Officials plan to raise the issue of penalties against the Dalian units of China COSCO Shipping Corp., which the U.S. accuses of knowingly violating restrictions on carrying Iranian oil.
◢ Iranian women fans are free to enter a football stadium Thursday for the first time in decades, after FIFA threatened to suspend the Islamic republic over its controversial male-only policy. Women were quick to get their hands on tickets to attend Iran's 2022 World Cup qualifier against Cambodia at Tehran's Azadi Stadium on Thursday.
◢ Iran's oil minister said Sunday that China's CNPC has withdrawn from the development of an offshore gas field and that state-owned Petropars will take over the entire project. The South Pars gas field was to be developed jointly by France's Total, China National Petroleum Corporation and Petropars under a $4.8-billion deal signed in July 2017.
◢ Iran boosted its cooperation with the international nuclear agency that’s trying to determine whether the government in Tehran failed to provide adequate information to monitors. Following meetings with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York, Iran started to provide more detailed information to IAEA officials.
◢ The U.S. Treasury Department’s top sanctions official, Sigal Mandelker, plans to leave the Trump administration after helping to increase the pace of economic penalties against American adversaries. Mandelker, who joined the Treasury Department in June 2017, has helped lead new sanctions on countries including North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.
◢ Iran will for the first time grant citizenship to children born to an Iranian mother and foreign father after a long-awaited bill was signed into law by the powerful Guardian Council in a significant victory for women’s rights. The law was passed by parliament with an overwhelming majority in May, and ratified on Wednesday.
◢ Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he agrees with the general outlines and basic terms of a European-led plan to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement. “The plan was acceptable in a sense, in terms of its outlines, as it called for Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons and to contribute to peace in the region and regional waterways,” Rouhani was cited as saying.
◢ US President Donald Trump phoned his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN summit last month but he refused to take the call, a French diplomatic source said on Tuesday. "In New York, up to the last moment, Emmanuel Macron tried to broker contact, as his talks with presidents Trump and Rouhani led him to think contact was possible," the diplomatic source said.
◢ Iran said on Monday that it is on track to create a new oil terminal on the Sea of Oman that would open a new export route for its crude and allow tankers to bypass the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The National Iranian Oil Company signed a contract worth around $52 million Monday with three local companies to supply 50 pumps for the pipeline project.
◢ Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Ankara would continue to purchase oil and natural gas from Iran despite US sanctions in comments published on Friday. "It is impossible for us to cancel relations with Iran with regards to oil and natural gas. We will continue to buy our natural gas from there," Erdogan told Turkish reporters.
◢ The British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero, which had been held off the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas for more than two months, set sail Friday, an Iranian shipping organization said. The ship's seizure was widely seen as a tit-for-tat move after authorities in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar detained an Iranian tanker.
◢ Iran has installed powerful new centrifuges in contravention of its 2015 agreement with world powers and is preparing new measures that will allow it to reconstitute its stockpile of enriched uranium. IAEA inspectors circulated the findings to member states on Thursday in a two-page restricted report.
◢ Oil-tanker costs are surging after the U.S. slapped sanctions on Chinese companies it accused of hauling Iranian crude, prompting a scramble in freight markets to secure alternative vessels. Rates for ships hauling 2 million-barrel cargoes of Middle East oil to Asia jumped 15% or more, according to brokers. Shares of tanker operators also gained.
◢ Iran has seized 8.8 tonnes of narcotics destined for Europe and uncovered one of the country's largest trafficking rings, police said Thursday. "This huge narcotics shipment, which was hidden in a petrol tanker and reached here via Iran's eastern border, was supposed to be offloaded and then smuggled to European countries," state television reported.
◢ French President Emmanuel Macron laid out what he says are the conditions for dialing back tensions with Iran, calling on the U.S. and the Iran’s regional rivals to show “the courage of building peace.” Iran is putting “maximum pressure” on the region, Macron said, in a word play on Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Tehran.
◢ Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said talks with the U.S. are still possible under two conditions, but the likelihood of direct negotiations at the United Nations this week appeared to be slipping away as key European leaders prepare to leave New York. Those demands look out of reach for now.
