Belgian Parliament Set To Facilitate Prisoner Swaps With Iran

Iranian government entities have stopped publishing information on fuel use for power generation, but the latest report from the Parliament Research Center in 2020 indicted that the use of mazut had reached 6 billion liters (around 1.6 billion gallons), or 62 percent higher than in 2017.

Mazut is a heavy, dirty fuel which is banned in most countries unless it is blended with less polluting fuels, but in Iran it is used regularly as its export market is limited.

The same report indicated that power plants in 2020 used 11 billion liters of diesel, or more than double than in 2017. In the 2020-2021 winter daily natural gas shortage reached 170 cubic meters and that led to higher usage of polluting fuels.

From 2021, all government and industry sources in Iran stopped publishing figures about usage of dirty fuels in power pants, but scattered media reports indicated that natural gas shortages had started before the winter of 2021-2022, but in the cold months it reached the unprecedented deficit of 250 million cubic meters per day.

In fact, Mehr news agency in Tehran reported in late February that Iran had again become a net diesel importer for the first time since 2014, most likely because of high diesel usage for power generation.

The chronic shortage of natural gas is noteworthy in the context of recent talk about Iran possibly supplying the much-needed fuel to Europe in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, Iran needs around $50 billion in investments to increase its natural gas production, although it has the world’s second largest reserves. At the time being, United States sanctions, as well as general investment risk factors make any infusion of capital and technology highly problematic, but even in the absence of such impediments, it would take years before the country can produce enough for significant exports.

Figures in the BP report show that in 2020 Iran produced 37 terawatts of its electricity from dirty fuels, but in 2021 it reached 49 terawatts. As a result, Iran’s greenhouse gas emissions reached the historic level of 893 million tons, an increase of 4.5 percent over 2020.

Iran is the sixth highest greenhouse gas contributor in the world, afterChina, the United States, India, Japan and Russia. Germany, with an 18-times bigger economy produces 28 percent less air pollution.

The BP report also indicates Iran’s nuclear electricity generation fell by 44 percent to 2.7 terawatts, and hydroelectric power generation decreased by 36 percent, due to drought.

Iran has also lagged in solar and wind energy generation. Last year it produced a combined total of 1.8-terawatt electricity from these renewables while neighboring Turkey generated 35 times more.

Nuclear, solar, and wind electricity generation constituted just over one percent of Iran’s 358 terawatts of electricity generation in 2021.

The USNI, a non-profit professional military forum that offers independent, nonpartisan info on security issues, published a photo of the vessel at Qeshm Madkandaloo Shipbuilding Cooperative Company shipyard on Thursday. It is visible in Airbus commercial satellite imagery shared publicly on Google Earth.

The unidentified catamaran, probably a missile boat, is seen next to another new multi-hulled missile watercraft -- a Shahid Soleimani-class missile corvette – and is characterized by a clean-angled form, appearing stealthier than earlier types. The new type bears some similarities with the Soleimani-class in overall form but is noticeably smaller, measuring about 50 meters (166 feet) long and 14 meters (46 feet) across.

The new vessel appears to lack the helipad that the Shahid Soleimani-class has, but since it is currently unfinished, it is difficult to assess the final fit. However, it does have two cut-outs in the aft deck that are indicative of pop-up missile tubes, likely for four to eight Noor or Qader anti-ship missiles, the Iranian versions of the Chinese C-802 family of sea-skimming missiles roughly equivalent to the US Harpoon and Neptune types.

Last week, IRGC Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri said Shahid Soleimani-class missile corvette, which carries helicopters, will be added to the IRGC Navy's fleet in the near future.

Late in June, Iran repeated its tactic of harassing American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, as three IRGC speedboats came dangerously close to US ships.

Fuad Hussein made the remarks during an interview with the Saudi Al-Arabiya television, without giving any further details. There were no comments from Cairo and Amman on the report. 

Diplomatic representation between Egypt and Iran is at the level of interest section offices since the two countries severed ties following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Hussein called for turning the talks between Tehran and Riyadh into a “declared dialogue”, adding that the focus of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi's visit to Saudi Arabia last Saturday was the dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran, where he went the following day.

Despite all speculations and expectations, Kadhimi’s visit led to no tangible results as the visiting Iraqi premier and Iranian president did not announce any news about Tehran-Riyadh talks during their joint press conference.

Iran and Saudi Arabia -- which are locked in proxy conflicts around the region -- have held several rounds of talks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad since 2021.

It was the Islamic Republic that suspended the talks in March a day after Saudi Arabia announced it had beheaded 81 men, including seven Yemenis and a Syrian, for “heinous crimes.” Forty-one were Saudi Shiites, Human Rights Watch reported, apparently convicted over protests.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in 2016 when mobs attacked its embassy in Tehran after Riyadh executed 47 dissidents including the leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

“These entities use deceptive practices to supply or attempt to supply Iran with US-origin electronics that would ultimately provide support to Iran's military,” the official journal of the federal government the Federal Register said on Thursday. 

The entities are added to the Entity List that means US suppliers need a license before they can ship items to the listed companies.

The companies were among 23 Chinese firms that were added to the trade blacklist this week, including five linked to arms sales to Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In addition to the five Chinese firms, companies in other countries such as Uzbekistan, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Lithuania were identified as supplying military goods to the Russian military since February, when the war began.

Earlier in June, the US Thursday sanctioned Chinese, Emirati and Iranian firms over exporting Iran's petrochemicals in a measure aimed at pushing Iran to renew the 2015 nuclear deal.

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said, “The United States is pursuing the path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action,” but would “continue to use our sanctions to limit exports of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran.”

The Ynet news site cited Turkish outlets as revealing that the intended target of the Iranian terror cell was Yosef Levi Sfari, Israel’s former consul general in Istanbul, who was rescued by authorities and sent back to Israel. 

According to reports, the Iranian agents were staying at the same hotel in which Levi Sfari and his partner Roni Goldberg were staying for their vacation, alleging that their other targets were Israeli tourists. "The Iranian squad was caught hot red-handed at the last minute," the reports added. 

Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) revealed the operation last Thursday just before the arrival of Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to Turkey, adding that the eight, who were not all Iranian nationals, were arrested in a raid in three houses in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district a week earlier.

Israeli officials and media began issuing warnings to citizens against traveling to Turkey in the end of May, citing suspected killing or abduction plots by Iran, which has vowed to avenge the May 22 assassination of a Revolutionary Guards colonel in Tehran that it blamed on Israeli agents. 

Israel’s National Security Council lowered the threat level in its travel warning from high to medium on Tuesday.

Reports said on Wednesday that Egyptian security officials also warned Iran not to operate on Egyptian soil during recent meetings among intelligence officials.