Iran Denies Links With Impounded Aircraft In Argentina

QatarEnergy, which announced Total as its first partner at the nearly $30 billion expansion project in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, added that more partners would be announced in the coming days. The expansion plan includes six LNG trains that will ramp up Qatar’s liquefaction capacity from 77 million tons per annum (mtpa) to 126 mtpa by 2027.

The news comes as Europe tries to replace Russian gas with supplies from other sources, and has directly courted Qatar as a major producer.

The French oil giant officially left Iran – along with Royal Dutch Shell, Russia’s Lukoil and Zarubezhneft, Italy’s Eni, Austrian group OMV and others – and abandoned a similar deal to develop the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in August 2018, after former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. 

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) replaced Total taking over Total’s 50.1 percent stake, but it also suspended its investment in South Pars in 2018 in response to US pressure.

With lack of investment and technology, Iran’s gas production in the Persian Gulf is falling and currently inadequate even to cover rising domestic demand.

In February, the current oil minister Javad Owji said that “many major companies” have sent emails to the ministry and initiated discussions to participate in expanding Iran’s part of the gas field.

The data and analytics firm Kpler was quoted by Prague-based, US-financed Persian language Radio Farda as saying that Iran’s illicit shipments of crude mainly to Asian markets dropped to around 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May.

The shipments were estimated to have been 908,000 bpd in March and 820,000 in April, as Iran claimed it is selling more than a million bpd in recent months.

When the United States imposed full oil export sanctions on Iran in May 2019, exports dropped from more than 2 million barrels a day in 2016-2017 to around 250,000. China was the main buyer of Iranian crude in this period.

Toward the end of 2020, as it became clear that then-President-elect Joe Biden was determined to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) with Iran abandoned by his predecessor in 2018, Iranian crude exports began to increase. China might have calculated that the risk of US retaliation decreased with the prospects of talks to restore the nuclear deal.

Exports gradually increased in 2021 as the United States engaged in indirect nuclear talks in Vienna. It reached new highs in early 2022 before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and sanctions on Moscow by many countries. Since then, Russia has apparently turned to China to sell its crude which happens to be Iran’s main oil customer.

In May, Reuters reported that about 20 tankers carrying around 40 million barrels of Iranian oil were waiting near Singapore to sell their cargos. As oil market monitoring firms have reported in the past Iranians oil is sold most probably to middlemen who then transfer the crude to Chinese ‘teapot’ small refineries.

Kpler told Radio Farda that the quantity of Iran’s unsold oil has not changed much, probably because shipments have declined.

Iran has denied that Russia is taking its market share, but $30 barrel reported discounts by Russia are apparently much more than Iran offers to customers willing to take a risk and buy its sanctioned crude.

The hardliner government of President Ebrahim Raisi prides itself for having “defeated US sanctions” and increased oil exports, as it tries to calm a volatile economic environment at home. The danger of three-digit inflation in Iran and the fall of its currency to a historic low over the weekend have led to angry protests on the streets.

The reported fall in exports in May can deal a new blow to Iran’s hard-pressed economy and further destabilize the political scene.

The year-long nuclear negotiations remain in deadlock, as Tehran demands its revolutionary Guard be removed from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

The US has signaled that if talks make no progress and Iran continues to expand its nuclear program, it may decide to tighten the screws on Tehran, which may mean a more rigorous enforcement of existing sanctions.

First came the announcement that a relatively junior officer, Ali Kamani, died in a “car accident in line of duty” in Khomein, central Iran. From the text of the announcement, it seemed the Revolutionary Guard officer was more important than what his rank would suggest. In expressing condolences to various military officials, the text even mentioned Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Then within hours news came that another officer of the Aerospace Force, Mohammad Abdus, had also died, in Semnan, central Iran where a space launch center is located.

Abdus was also tagged as a “martyr” although no explanation was offered by media affiliated with the IRGC about how he had died.

So far, the IRGC or their media have not offered any further details about the death of the two officers from the same force in one day, although the deaths could have occurred earlier and only announced on Sunday.

In the latest updates on Monday, Iran's defense ministry emphasized that both officers died on dury in Iran, and IRGC sources deleted their earlier reports, deferring to the ministry.

It is possible that the two officers were killed in Israeli air and missile strikes in Syria recently, but a series of other killings and deaths among IRGC ranks in Iran leads to suspicion that they might have been targets of a secret series of operations.

The IRGC aerospace force is tasked with Iran’s missile development and space program. The country has made considerable progress in developing long-range ballistic missiles that can threaten the far fringes of the Middle East, including Israel. Regional countries have been concerned about the potential threat from a large number of these missiles.

Considering recent killings of other Revolutionary Guard officers in Iran, some Iranians on social media drew the conclusion that the deaths most likely are part of a highly professional anti-IRGC operation carried out with precision. Iranian intelligence organizations that usually boast of breaking up “terrorist operations” and discovering secret caches of weapons and explosives, have so far not pretended to have arrested anyone who might have been a recent string of killings and deaths.

The first high-profile killing took place in November 2020 when a chief architect of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed near Tehran in an operation more fitting for a Hollywood thriller. He was shot by a remote-controlled heavy gun place in the back of a pickup truck while driving on a highway.

Eventually it was generally accepted that Israel was behind the highly complicated operation, and that is what most people believe now.

Just last week, there was the mysterious death of an aerospace scientist, Ayoob Entezari, who died shortly after dining with an unnamed man, as authorities scrambled to deny that his death was the result of poisoning.

Just days earlier, a commander in IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Force’s secretive unit 840 died when he fell from the roof or balcony of his home in Karaj, west of Tehran.

He was a colleague of Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh who was assassinated outside his home in Tehran in broad daylight on May 22. A foreign security source told Iran International that he was in charge of operations against Israeli citizens and interests in various countries.

Whoever is behind these attacks not only weakens the Revolutionary Guard by eliminating key individuals but creates fear and panic among Islamic Republic officials and harms the image of Iranian military and intelligence establishment of being omnipotent.

The establishment has long tried to convince the people in Iran that it has total control over the country and can guarantee security.

According to information obtained by Radio Farda, these 26 people, all of whom are residents of the city of Shiraz in the southwestern province of Fars, are charged with "conspiracy to disrupt internal and external security."

The verdicts was issued on June 8 by a branch of the city’s Revolutionary Court, and pertains to the arrests of numerous Baha'is in Shiraz in 2016.

The 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Baha'ism − established as a new religion in Iran in 1863 by Baha'ullah, who claimed to be a prophet following Jesus and Mohammad − has always been deemed heretical by the Shia establishment and subject to intermittent bouts of political persecution.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.

Baha'is, who number around 300,000 in Iran, say their rights are systematically violated, that they are often harassed, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and are deprived of government job and university education. There are Baha’i communities in many countries worldwide but there is no reliable figure about the total number of followers.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on Sunday after attending a session of the Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy to brief lawmakers about a resolution passed by the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to condemn lack of cooperation by the Islamic Republic. 

“Every time that the opposite side put forth excessive demands during the [Vienna talks], we used the country’s own tools and power, so that they would understand that the interests and welfare of the Iranian nation were important to us,” he said without elaborating on the tools, but he was probably referring to the government’s decision to reduce monitoring access to the UN nuclear watchdog. 

Iran told the IAEA it plans to remove more monitoring equipment after the 35-member IAEA board Wednesday passed the resolution. Tehran says it intends to maintain a basic level of monitoring and inspectors’ access as required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In a statement issued by the Iranian parliament on Sunday, 260 lawmakers slammed the IAEA's “excessive, politically-motivated measure,” saying the resolution proves that the agency and its director general have lost all their technical credibility, in reference to Rafael Grossi’s recent visit to Israel.

On Friday, all Friday Prayer Imams in Iran, who are representatives of the Supreme Leader, backed the decision to reduce relations with the IAEA.