Iran thwarts attempt by United States to detain an oil tanker

In a major act of defiance, Iran announced Wednesday that it had foiled a US attempt to confiscate Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman, setting the stage for further Iranian defensive acts to protect its oil exports in the face of growing threats from the US to restrict Iran’s oil trade. 

The naval forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have launched a daring operation to protect Iran’s oil export after American forces confiscated a giant Iranian oil tanker in the Sea of Oman and transshipped its oil shipment to another oil tanker, the Iranian state media said on Wednesday. 

According to Iran’s state-run TV, the IRGC navy forces conducted a heliborne operation to return the seized oil cargo to Iran. The IRGC troops landed onboard the oil tanker carrying the seized oil and led it into Iran’s territorial waters. 

In the meantime, US forces sent several helicopters and destroyers in a bid to retake the oil tanker but the IRGC navy prevented them from doing so, according to Iranian media. 

The US made another effort to prevent Iran from taking the oil tanker but failed. 

The oil tanker is now in Iran’s territorial waters. Iranian media offered no further detail as to when the encounter happened and which country the seized oil tanker belongs to. 

The IRGC media office confirmed the encounter in a statement on Wednesday and said the oil tanker has docked at a Bandar Abbas port. The statement described the US move as “robbery.”

The United States has remained silent on Iran’s announcement. Of course, a US military official to Al-Jazeera, “The allegations of the Revolutionary Guard Corps about the Iranian oil tanker are not true.”

But the IRGC said it had “clear, telling, and undeniable images of the encounter” that would be shared with mass media. 

The episode marked the first time Iran and the U.S. engaged in a tense encounter since Joe Biden took office nearly a year ago. It also came against a backdrop of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over when to resume the stalled Vienna nuclear talks on how to revive a 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On October 27, Iran said the Vienna talks will begin before the end of November. It also said on Monday the exact date for resuming the talks will be announced this week. 

While Iran’s return to Vienna remains under consideration, Washington and allies in Europe and the region ramped up their pressures on Iran both diplomatically and now economically. 

On the other hand, Iran called on the US to provide “objective guarantees” that Washington won’t renege on its commitments under a revived nuclear deal with Iran again.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described US administrations as “rogue regimes” that are not reliable to work with. 

“Onus is on @POTUS to convince int'l community—incl all JCPOA participants—that his signature means something. For that, ‘objective guarantees’ needed. No one would accept anything less,” Khatibzadeh said on Twitter. 

But it seems that the US has refrained from offering such guarantees. The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, likened the current state of play between Iran and the US to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. 

“The attacks from Saddam were in progress / the sanctions continue. Part of Iran was under the enemy’s occupation / the Iranian nation’s economy has been held hostage. The combatants were defending (Iran) in the front line / The scientists proceed with the legal nuclear activities,” he said on Twitter. 

Just as Saddam Hussein when he offered to hold negotiations with Iran, Shamkhani continued, President Biden too, is not repentant for his policy on Iran. And he is not willing to offer guarantees, the top Iranian security official added. 

“In case the current situation does not change, the result of negotiations would be clear in advance,” he warned. 

Shamkhani’s remarks, along with reports of a hike in Iran’s oil exports in recent months that seem to be the main reason behind the latest encounter, were the latest sign that the resumption of negotiations between Iran and the West won’t affect Iran’s active resistance policy adopted after former US President Donald Trump launched his “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. 

US Fed decision to tapper asset purchase a nonevent

For the first time since the pandemic began, the US Federal Reserve will reduce the stimulus they provided during COVID-19 crisis. Given the significance of this move and what it means for the central bank’s economic outlook, greenback should be trading much higher.

However, there’s been very little demand for the greenback over the past two weeks because the Fed has done an effective job of preparing the market for the imminent change. They’ve been talking about reducing or tapering asset purchases for the past few months giving investors plenty of time to position for the move. Bond yields soared and USD/JPY rose to its strongest level in 3 years just under two weeks ago but since then, we’ve seen more consolidation than continuation.

The decision to taper won’t be the most market moving one on Wednesday. Instead, investors want to know when taper will end and rate hikes begin. Fed Chairman Powell previously said taper could be finished sometime around the middle of next year. A precise end date will be positive for greenback, although it could also be calculated by the amount of bond purchases cut per month.

For example, if they reduce bond purchases by US$15 billion a month starting November, they could be done buying bonds by June 2022. Any number larger than US$15 billion (between Treasuries and mortgage backed securities) would be considered aggressive and anything smaller would be considered conservative.

The larger the reduction, the more upside pressure for the greenback and downside pressure for stocks. With the housing market refusing to cool, the Fed is unlikely to go for a smaller move but based on the new highs in stocks, investors also don’t expect significant hawkishness.

The Fed will be reluctant to make any commitments about rate hikes. Powell will almost certainly downplay the need to change interest rates but investors will make their own assumptions based upon how much they cut asset purchases and what he says about inflation.

CPI growth is at a 30 year high but core PCE, retail sales, non-farm payroll growth and ISM manufacturing declined from the previous month. Right now, there’s a significant misalignment between investor expectations and Fed guidance. None of the members of the FOMC expect rates to rise in 2022 but the market is pricing in over 50bp of tightening in year 2022. 

If the Fed fans those expectations by suggesting that prices are less transitory (or that word disappears completely), the greenback will rise but if they don’t waver from their view that prices will fall, the disappointment will send EUR/USD and USD/JPY plunging. 

Before FOMC, ADP and ISM services, two important leading indicators for Friday’s non-farm payrolls report will be released, making it a very insightful day for the greenback.

India one of largest buyers of military hardware from Israel

Israel and India have agreed to form a task force that will build a 10-year cooperation plan to identify new areas in defense cooperation between the two countries. The plan that includes defense procurement, production and research and development, has been agreed upon during a recent visit of Ajay Kumar, Director General of Indian Ministry of Defense to Israel.

Kumar met with his Israeli counterpart, Director General of Defense Ministry Amir Eshel at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv for the 15th meeting of the Joint Working Group on defense cooperation.

According to The Times of India, during the meeting, the two officials discussed bilateral military technological cooperation as well as strategic challenges in the Middle East and Indo Pacific regions.

“The two sides reviewed the progress made in military to military engagements, including exercises and industry cooperation,” an Indian official was quoted by the report, adding that “it was also decided to form a new sub-working group on defense industry cooperation.”

India recently participated in the Blue Flag international air drill, sending for the first time a Mirage fighter squadron to Israel. India had also participated in Blue Flag 2017. 

Israel has been supplying India with various weapons systems, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles over the last few years, making India one of Israel’s largest buyers of military hardware.

A 2020 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that Israel’s arms exports over the past four years have been the highest ever and accounted for 3% of the global total. 

According to the report, the top three customers of Israeli arms were India (45%), Azerbaijan (17%) and Vietnam (8.5%). Weapons sales to India have consistently totaled over US$ one billion per year.

In September, India purchased 4 Heron MK II from Israel Aerospace Industries in a deal worth some US$200 million as part of the country’s plans to upgrade the military amid its ongoing border strife with China.

The Indian Air Force already operates more than 180 Israeli-made UAVs, including IAI-made Searchers and 68 unarmed Heron 1s, for surveillance and intelligence gathering, as well as a fleet of IAI-produced Harpy UAVs, which carry a high-explosive warhead and self-destructs to take out targets such as radar stations.

Last year the Indian cabinet approved an order of two Phalcon AWACs from Israel in a deal reportedly about US$ one billion that had been in the works for the past few years.

Mounted on a Russian Ilyushin-76 heavy-lift aircraft the system has Active Electronic Steering Array (AESA), L-Band radar with 360° coverage and can detect and track incoming aircraft, cruise missiles and drones before ground-based radars.

The first three Phalcon AWACS were obtained by the Indian Air Force in 2009 after a US$1.1 billion. The deal was signed between India, Israel, and Russia in 2004.  

The two countries have also signed contracts to manufacture and supply BARAK 8/MRSAM missile kits for the Indian Army and Air Force.

The MR-SAM system, jointly developed by India’s Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in close collaboration with Israel's Israel Aircraft Industry, is a land-based configuration of the long range surface-to-air missile (LRSAM) or Barak-8 naval air defense system. It is capable of shooting down enemy aircraft at a range of 50 to 70 km; it will help to protect India from enemy aircraft and will replace the country’s aging air defense systems. 

Israel accuses Iran for installing advanced anti aircraft batteries in Syria

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria in an attempt to thwart Iranian entrenchment and supply of advanced weapons to not only to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon but also in countries like Iraq and even further.

While Israeli strikes on Syria have intensified, the response time by Syrian air-defense batteries has become quicker. This has lead to the Israel Air Force (IAF) changing it acts during such operations that include having larger formation during operations so that more targets can be struck at once instead of having jets return to the same target.

In 2018, an F-16 crashed in northern Israel after it was struck by an S-200 missile fired by Syrian forces during an Israeli operation. Syrian missiles have also landed in Israel in recent years, including this year when shrapnel from one missile hit northern Tel Aviv and another errant interceptor missile landed close to the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev Desert.

Iran is a top priority for Israel’s military and Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has set aside an additional defense budget for war readiness and military exercises. The IAF has also resumed intensive training for scenarios in which Iran’s nuclear facilities are targeted.

In an attempt to challenge Israeli jets, Iran has changed the deployment of its anti-aircraft missile batteries, separating their radars from the missile launchers. Such a move forces more Israeli jets to take part in any possible operation against the country’s nuclear program.

The IAF believes that the defense industry of Iran is robust. While it might not have an air force, its drone capabilities are enormous and pose a major threat to Israel and other regional countries, as evident from the 2019 Aramco attack and the recent attack on Mercer Street earlier this year.

Defense officials have identified an increased amount of Iranian drones in the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups.

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad group and Hezbollah have all used weaponized drones to carry out attacks after they invested in drone capabilities.

Drones have breached Israeli airspace in recent years, leading the IDF to scramble jets or fire missiles. Hamas used Iranian drones during the last war in May, and several Iranian drones tried to breach Israeli airspace in the North of the country.

Following the attack on Mercer Street, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned that Iran has used its drones in several attacks, and it is “exactly why we must act now against Iran. Iran not only strives to gain nuclear capabilities, but it is also sparking a dangerous arms race and creating instability in the Middle East through militias armed with hundreds of UAVs, in Iran, Yemen, Iraq and other countries.”

Warning that the threat posed by Iran is “not a future threat but a tangible and immediate one,” Gantz vowed that Israel will work to remove any threat against Israeli citizens and interests.

Biden wants to mend relations between US and France

Joe Biden, President of the United States, has lately acknowledged that handling of a submarine deal with Australia by his administration was clumsy.

 He sought to repair relations between the US and France during a one-on-one meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Italy.

The security pact made between Australia, United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUKUS, caused a rift between the US and its oldest ally, France and resulted in France temporarily recalling its ambassador to the United States

“I think what happened was, to use an English phrase, what we did was clumsy,” Biden told reporters during the meeting with Macron at the French Embassy to the Holy See. "It was not done with a lot of grace. I was under the impression certain things had happened that hadn’t happened."

“I want to be clear: France is an extremely, an extremely valued partner,” Biden continued. “We have the same values.”

Biden later said he was under the impression that France had been informed long before the AUKUS pact was announced, in fact Paris had not been.

“We clarified together what we had to clarify,” Macron then told reporters. “And now what’s important is precisely to be sure that such a situation will not be possible for our future.”

Macron insisted on the need for “stronger coordination" and "stronger cooperation” and said the two countries had taken steps in recent weeks to enhance their ties.

"What really matters now is what we will do together in the coming weeks, the coming months, the coming years," he said.

France was caught flat-footed with the announcement of the AUKUS pact, which deals with security in the Asia Pacific, and reacted angrily to the announcement last month. The pact involves the U.S. and the U.K. selling Australia nuclear-powered submarines and caused France to lose out on a multibillion-dollar deal to provide submarines to Australia.

At the time, one French official likened Biden to former President Trump, who often acted unilaterally to the dismay of US allies.

Biden and Macron have spoken twice over the phone since the incident. On Friday, there were signs of a thawing. Biden and Macron shook hands, sat closely to one another and occasionally smiled in the meeting, giving way to a genial atmosphere that seemed to ease tensions between the US and France in recent weeks.

A senior administration official told reporters following the meeting that the two leaders discussed a range of topics, including Russia, China, Iran and nuclear issues.

The official also said of the US-France relationship: “We’re moving forward.”

 “We had some hard conversations in September and October, I think the conversations heading into November will be exciting and engaging,” the official said. “There’s not any sense that there's some kind of fundamental rift in the relationship, I think, at this point.”

The meeting came at the start of Biden’s second overseas trip as president. Both leaders will attend a Group of 20 Summit in Rome and, later, a major UN climate summit in Glasgow.

If Hezbollah not, who else is responsible for Beirut port explosion?

A new report by Rai Al-Youm about the investigations into Beirut port explosion reveals that a bank account based in a Gulf capital and its main branch in Switzerland financed the ship and personalities affiliated with the future introduced nitrates without Hariri’s knowledge. 

The results of the port’s investigations will not be published as it is part of the black box of the war in Syria.

The investigation into the last year’s explosion in Beirut port is still kept secret and the Lebanese judicial authorities have been keen not to publish anything about this investigation. The investigation is supposed to answer the questions that preoccupied Lebanese public opinion since the first day of Beirut’s shaking and destruction.

There are two important questions, 1) who brought the ammonium nitrate to the port of Beirut? Who owned the ship? 

Since the explosion, the Secretary General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah has demanded the judicial investigator in three letters to publish the results of the technical investigation to the Lebanese public opinion. He has said to the judge, “If you do not want to publish the investigation to the public opinion, at least gather the families of the port victims and tell them how their sons were martyred.” 

 But those demands from Hassan Nasrallah did not resonate and the investigation results were kept secret. The current investigative judge Tariq Al-Bitar, as the former judge Fadi Sawan preceded him, followed up the part related to job negligence in the explosion without details of what preceded the shipment.

The first part, Job neglect, required a request to listen and investigate several parliamentarians, military commanders and general managers that caused split in Lebanon, accusing the judge of discretion in summoning and politicization. Still, the judge concentrated on ministers who held the position in the period between the ship’s arrival and the explosion.

He also chose the former Prime Minister Hassan Diab without summoning previous prime ministers who successively held the position during the presence of nitrates inside the port. These are questions and observations made by political parties and legal figures that Judge Bitar did not answer until now.

According to Rai Al-Youm sources, the investigation answers these questions regarding who brought the ship to Lebanon and for whom? The authorities talk about part of the investigations with broad headings without going into details.

The sources report that the shipment was paid for from a bank account based in an Arabian state in the Persian Gulf, with the main branch in Switzerland. The shipment was brought in by some figures in the Future Movement, without the knowledge of Saad Hariri.

The sources suggested that the nitrates were stored in the port and were due to transport into Syrian territory to benefit terrorist groups stationed on the Syrian-Lebanese border. At that time, some of the materials remained neglected in ward No. 12 in the port.

It appears that the ship, its owners, and the shipment route were included within the “black box” of the war in Syria, which was forbidden with strict international and regional support, not to disclose or publish facts of the Syrian conflict. Including the parties involved in it, how weapons and terrorists transferred, and their financing for that. 

 According to Rai Al-Youm, there is not a single evidence against Hezbollah in the investigations and that the accountability framework will be limited to those directly responsible for negligence. Information indicates that the judge was heading to close the file and issue the indictment, but the prosecution insisted on listening to former President Michel Suleiman, and former Prime Minister Tammam Salam, before giving the decision.

The investigation into the port explosion will likely reach a clear conclusion for public opinion and legal accountability, unlike other files that remain pending without conclusions.

 

Biden administration sanctions top Iranian military official

Biden administration on Friday sanctioned a top Iranian military official for his role in the July attack on an Israeli-managed commercial shipping vessel in the Gulf of Oman. In addition to that there was blacklisting a network of individuals and companies behind Iran’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program. 

Iran’s drone program is a highly criticized aspect of its military support and operations in the Middle East against US forces and partners in the region. 

This includes actions in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; actions against Saudi and Israeli entities; and its reported use in Ethiopia’s brutal, yearlong civil war. 

“Iran’s proliferation of UAVs across the region threatens international peace and stability,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

“Iran and its proxy militants have used UAVs to attack US forces, our partners, and international shipping. Treasury will continue to hold Iran accountable for its irresponsible and violent acts.”

The sanctions come days after US intelligence officials reportedly pointed to Iran as behind a drone attack on a military outpost in southern Syria where American forces reside, although no injuries were reported.  

Targeted individuals include Saeed Aghajani, Brigadier Beneral of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who oversees the military unit’s drone command and directs the planning, equipment and training of drone operations, the Treasury Department said in a statement. 

Aghajani is described as orchestrating a July 29 attack on the commercial shipping vessel Mercer Street off the coast of Oman, killing two Romanian crew members. The incident was condemned by the US, the United Kingdom, Romania and Israel. The Israeli management office was located in London. 

The Treasury Department further said that Aghajani was behind the planning of a 2019 attack against oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, which temporarily disrupted global oil markets and risked triggering a larger, regional confrontation. 

Other sanctioned individuals include IRGC Brigadier General Abdollah Mehrabi, Chief of the IRGC Aerospace Force Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization. The Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company, co-owned by Mehrabi, was also sanctioned along with its Managing Director, Yousef Aboutalebi.

The Treasury sanctioned the Kimia Part Sivan Company (KIPAS), an Iranian-based company that the US says has worked with the IRGC's elite Quds Force to improve its UAV program, and blacklisted Mohammad Ebrahim Zargar Tehrani for helping KIPAS source UAV components from companies based outside of Iran. 

The sanctions block any property or interests held in the US by the blacklisted individuals or companies, prohibit American transactions with those sanctioned and put international financial institutions on notice that they risk being blocked from the U.S. market if they engage with sanctioned entities. 

Iran is likely to take issue with the sanctions amid its deliberations to return to international talks to reinvigorate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international nuclear agreement that former President Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018.

Iran has said it is likely to return to talks before the end of November. The sixth round of talks ended in April.

The intent of the JCPOA is to put strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities and subject it to intensive oversight, but critics of the agreement say it does little to curb Iran's other problematic behavior, such as its support for proxy fighting forces across the Middle East.