Iran terms holding of Israeli cabinet meeting in Golan Heights provocative

Iranian Foreign Ministry has denounced the provocative move of the Israeli regime to hold a cabinet meeting in the occupied Golan Heights that belongs to Syria.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described this act as “provocative”, stressing that the occupied Golan Heights is an integral part of the Arab Republic of Syria in line with numerous United Nations Resolutions, especially UN Security Council Resolution 497.

Khatibzadeh added the UN General Assembly has underlined this “undeniable reality” every year that the Golan Heights is part of the Syrian territory.

Settlement expansions and an increase in the number of migrant in the occupied Golan Heights cannot change this reality, he said, adding Israeli settlers should understand that they cannot remain in occupied territories forever, the Foreign Ministry reported at its website.

He also reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s solidarity with as well as its unwavering and iron-clad support for the Arab Republic of Syria in this regard.

On December 26, the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett voted in favor of a plan that aims to build 7,300 settler homes in Golan over a five-year period. The decision was taken during the cabinet meeting in Golan.

Israel aims to attract roughly 23,000 new Jew settlers to the area occupied during the Six Day War in 1967.

Israel annexed the territory on December 14, 1981, in a move not recognized by the international community.

 

Iran begins swapping Turkmenistan gas to Azerbaijan

According to a report, the agreement between Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on a natural gas swap deal for up to two billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas has taken effect on January 01, 2022.

As reported, of the total received gas from Turkmenistan about 20 to 30 percent will be the share of Iran as swap fee and the rest will be delivered to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan will reportedly receive four million cubic meters of new energy supplies per day. However, the figure is currently less than four million and will gradually reach that amount.

The deal, which was backed by the Presidents of the three Caspian countries during the 15th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in the Turkmen capital city of Ashgabat on November 28, 2021, was signed by the oil ministers of the two countries on November 30, 2021.

Under the swap deal, Iran will receive gas from Turkmenistan and deliver an equivalent amount minus the swap fee to Azerbaijan at the Astara border. The gas that Iran will receive from Turkmenistan under the swap agreement will cater to the needs of Northern provinces of the country.

Iran has major natural gas fields in the south but has imported gas from Turkmenistan since 1997 for distribution in its Northern provinces, especially during the winter.

Experts believe that the implementation of this deal could encourage other countries in the region to ink similar deals and to use the Islamic Republic’s capacities in this regard.

Having the largest high-pressure gas pipeline network after Russia, Iran can play a key role in transferring gas from east to west of Iran and to the neighboring countries such as Azerbaijan.

This deal is also a big step for Iran as it would ensure stable gas supply to the country’s Northeastern regions which are far away from the sources of natural gas in the country.

United States no more dependent on Saudi oil

The US energy firms added oil and natural gas rigs for a record 17 months in a row as higher prices lured some drillers back to the well-pad after last year's coronavirus-driven decline in demand.

The oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, was unchanged at 586 in the week ended December 31, 2021 energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report on Friday.

During December 2021, the total rig count rose by 17 and for the quarter the count was up 65, its fifth increase in a row. For the year the count was up 235. This was against a decrease of 454 rigs in 2020 and a decline of 278 rigs in 2019.

Even though the rig count has been rising for a record 17 months in a row, analysts noted production was still expected to ease as energy firms continue to focus more on returning money to investors than boosting output.

US oil rigs were steady at 480 during the week under review, while gas rigs were also unchanged at 106.

US crude futures traded around US$75 per barrel on Friday, putting the contract on track for its best month since February 2021.

With oil prices up about 55% this year, the best yearly performance since 2009 - some energy firms boost spending in 2021 and continue to do the same in 2022. They had cut drilling and completion expenditures in 2019 and 2020.

That spending increase was small and much of the money was spent on completing wells that were drilled in the past. This is termed DUC (drilled but uncompleted) wells.

Most firms continue to focus on boosting cash flow, reducing debt and increasing shareholder returns rather than adding output.

US oil production is estimated to have declined to 11.2 million bpd in 2021 from 11.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2020. However, output is likely to rise to 11.9 million bpd in 2022 according to government projections. The all-time annual high of 12.3 million bpd was achieved in 2019.

 

Cuba signs Belt and Road agreement with China

Reportedly Cuba and China have signed a cooperation plan to push forward construction projects under Beijing’s overseas infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Chinese Embassy in Cuba announced the agreement on its website on December 26, 2021 saying that the deal was inked two days earlier by He Lifeng, Head of China’s top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, and Cuban Vice Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas.

The agreement implemented a memorandum of understanding the two nations signed in 2018, when Cuba agreed to become a BRI participating nation.

Under the agreement, the two nations aimed to work together on projects in several key sectors, including communications, education, health and biotechnology, science and technology, and tourism, according to the Agencia Cubana de Noticias news agency.

The Chinese Embassy also stated that a timetable and a roadmap had been proposed to implement the projects, without giving details.

China launched the BRI in 2013 in an effort to build Beijing-centered land and maritime trade networks by financing infrastructure projects throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In recent years, critics have denounced Beijing for using “debt-trap diplomacy” to lure countries into its initiative.

Many countries have surrendered pieces of their sovereignty after failing to pay off Chinese debts. For example, China Merchants Port Holdings is now running Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease, after the South Asian country converted its owed loans of US$1.4 billion into equity in 2017. Seizing the port has allowed Beijing to gain a key foothold in the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese regime has also sought to partner with countries rich in natural resources—such as African BRI participants Ghana and Zambia—in order to gain access to these raw materials to drive the Chinese economy.

It appears that China has its eyes set on Cuba’s natural resources, as a Chinese researcher told China’s state-run media outlet Global Times on December 26 that the BRI agreement was good because China and Cuba “have strong economic complementarities.”

The researcher was quoted as saying that “Cuba is rich in mineral and oil resources, and is a major source of nickel ore for China.” Cuba has one of the world’s largest nickel deposits in the world.

China has been Cuba’s important energy partner. Chinese companies have supplied wind turbines to Cuba’s wind farms and overseen the construction of Cuba’s first biomass-fired power plant at Ciro Redondo.

The US-based organization American Security Project, in an article published in March, warned about Cuba’s energy dependency on China and Venezuela as having “serious implications for hemispheric security.”

In addition, the Chinese paramilitary has also provided “counter-terrorism” training to the Cuban military and police forces responsible for suppressing anti-government protesters.

In fact, China has an ambition that goes beyond just Cuba. During a Senate hearing in March, Craig Faller, a retired admiral and a former commander of the US Southern Command, warned that Beijing seeks to “establish global logistics and basing infrastructure in our hemisphere in order to project and sustain military power at greater distances.”

Faller told lawmakers at the hearing that China was on a “full-court press” in order to achieve its ambition.

“I look at this hemisphere as the front line of competition,” Faller said. “Our influence [in this hemisphere] is eroding. … It is important that we remain engaged in this hemisphere.”

During a press briefing following the hearing, Faller described the Chinese regime’s influence as “insidious,” “corrosive,” and “corrupt.”

“Some examples include their pursuit of multiple port deals, loans for political leverage, vaccine diplomacy that undermines sovereignty, state surveillance IT, and the exploitation of resources such as illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing,” Faller said.

A month after Faller’s warning Stephanie Murphy introduced a bill requiring several US federal agencies, including the State Department, to put together a report for Congress. The report would assess China’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

One of the issues the report would examine is China’s relationship with Cuba and Venezuela. Another is China’s efforts to exploit natural resources in the region.

“It is critical for US policymakers to understand what China is doing in the region and to have an effective strategy in place to counter China’s aggressive conduct and to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its actions,” Murphy said, according to a statement from her office.

 

Putin advises United States to stay away from Ukraine

Speaking to journalists at his annual end-of-year press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin talked about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues that have dominated Russian headlines over the past 12 months. 

Top of the agenda was tension with NATO that has seen a dramatic escalation recently. Putin stressed that meetings alone (with NATO or the United States) will not be enough for the Kremlin for the tensions to ease insisting “we don’t care about negotiations, we want results, not an inch to the East they told us in the 1990s, and look what happened – they cheated us, vehemently and blatantly.”

Last week, Moscow sent documents to the US and NATO seeking assurances that the Western forces and their advanced military hardware will not expand further eastwards towards Russian borders in a bid to ease the friction between the two sides. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed that talks between Russian and US officials will be held early next year. Putin pointed out “now they’re saying that (NATO) will have Ukraine as well. This means they will deploy their weapons in Ukraine, even if it's not officially part of NATO.” According to the Russian leader, it is now up to the North Atlantic Alliance to “immediately” come up with guarantees as opposed to just “talking about it for decades.”

The Russian leader has long maintained that Western officials had always promised that NATO forces would not seek to fill the void that was left behind following the fall of the Warsaw Pact, but it instead went ahead with making Eastern bloc nations such as Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, and Poland NATO members. There is a concern in Russia of NATO stationing missiles in non-member state Ukraine which will essentially allow NATO to reduce “their flight time to Moscow to seven-to-ten minutes, and if hypersonic weapons are deployed, to just five.” Russia has warned it will prevent such threats.

There is a concern in Russia of NATO stationing missiles in non-member state Ukraine. The Russian President said it was important to “calculate the risks of such a war, even if it is the result of a provocation.” According to Putin much of Ukraine is historically “Russian lands with Russian populations that were cut off from Russia” by the fall of the Soviet Union. “We accepted this” he noted. “We helped new states to grow and worked with all governments no matter their foreign policy. Remember our relations with [President Viktor] Yushenko and [Prime Minister Yulia] Timoshenko? Just like today’s leadership, they were speaking about pro-West orientations. We talked with them, we had certain arguments and conflicts, about gas and so on, but we managed to engage in a dialogue and we worked with them and were ready to go on, and we didn’t even think about doing anything regarding Crimea.”

Among the other highlights of the press conference, Putin touched on his country’s ties with Asian superpower China. He forecasted that within the next three decades, China will surpass the United States in every aspect of its economy, predicting that Washington will lose its global dominance in both finance and trade. He said “today, China’s economy is already larger than America’s in terms of purchasing power parity.” According to Putin, “by 2035-2050 it will have surpassed the US and China will become the leading economy in the world according to all metrics.”

The Russian president accused the West of working to undermine the world’s most populous nation and with attempts to hold back its economic growth. He says efforts such as the US-led boycott of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing purportedly over alleged human rights abuses is a false attempt to try and ensure China “cannot raise its head” above its competitors. Putin strongly rebuked the move as “unacceptable and erroneous,” and an “attempt to restrain the development of the People’s Republic of China.” 

This month, Putin and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping held a virtual meeting amid escalating tensions between the two nations on one hand and the West on the other. Following the talks, Moscow said that both sides agreed to initiate a combined financial mechanism to lessen independence on U.S.-controlled platforms. Experts say the measure appears to be in response to a series of warnings that the West may press ahead with plans to disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT financial system as a form of punitive measure.

During the press conference, Putin said China is Russia’s number-one partner, pointing out that “we have very trusting relations and it helps us build good business ties as well.”
He says “we are cooperating in the field of security. The Chinese Army is equipped to a significant extent with the world’s most advanced weapons systems. We are even developing certain high-tech weapons together,” Putin also praised his Chinese counterpart and “friend”, Xi Jinping, saying “we have very trusting relations and it helps us build good business ties as well.” 

Once again, Putin rejected claims that Russia is deliberately choking off supplies of gas to Western Europe in an effort to put pressure on the EU not to block the Moscow-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The project, which has been completed, is awaiting certification from German regulators. The President strongly denied such allegations, which have previously been leveled at the Kremlin by Washington and a number of mainstream western news outlets. “Of course, it’s not [true]. They are lying all the time, Gazprom is delivering the volume [of gas] requested by its partners in full, in accordance with existing contracts.”

He added, “Russia is not the only supplier to the European market. But we’re probably the only ones who are increasing deliveries; there were adverse weather conditions last year. Not enough gas was pumped into storage. Wind turbines didn’t work. All this has created a deficit.”

Asked about opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who is currently serving a prison sentence, Putin said that it was time to move on from the matter. He says the Russian prosecutor’s office had not received even one document supporting accusations that he was poisoned with Novichok before being taken ill on a flight to Moscow.

Putin told reporters “There is no need to talk about it” simply telling reporters “Let’s move on.” The Western-backed activist was taken ill shortly after his plane took off from the Siberian city of Tomsk. He was taken to hospital and, following requests from his family, was then flown (oddly enough) to Berlin and treated in a clinic there. Doctors in Germany later claimed that Navalny had been infected with the toxic nerve agent made headlines in the West but Moscow’s requests for samples or evidence to back up the allegations fell on deaf ears.

Earlier this year, in another twist, Navalny returned to Russia, with the full knowledge that he would more than likely be jailed for breaking the conditions of a suspended sentence handed down to him in 2014 when he was found guilty of embezzling US$415,000 from two different firms. He was later handed a sentence of two years and eight months for breaking the law. 

In front of Russian journalists as well as reporters from around the world; Putin touched on many other issues such as the coronavirus, economy, and Russia’s declining population, but his comments on NATO and China will likely dominate the headlines for the foreseeable future.

 

Israel hits Syrian port for second time this month

According to Reuters, Israel launched an air strike on Syria's main port of Latakia on Tuesday in the second such attack this month, setting ablaze the container storage area.

Official Syrian reports made no mention of any casualties. A source familiar with the operations of the Port, was quoted saying the strike hit a container area where allegedly large consignments of Iranian munitions were stored.

"These blasts and huge fires were caused by the explosions from the munitions stored in a warehouse close to commercial cargo," the source who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter told Reuters.

Syrian state news agency SANA quoted the head of the Latakia fire brigade as saying the containers targeted in the strike contained oils and spare parts for machines and cars.

Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it says are Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces led by Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, visiting an Israeli air-force base did not speak about the specific incident on Tuesday but warned his country would not allow Iran to use Syria to threaten Israel.

"I call upon the region's countries to stop Iran from violating their sovereignty and people. Israel will not allow Iran to funnel balance-breaching weapons to its proxies and threaten our citizens," Gantz said.

Another source alleged Tehran had in recent months transferred weapons by sea as it sought to dodge intensified Israeli strikes that struck eastern Syria near a weapons supply corridor along the border with Iraq.

The drone strikes disabled several large weapons convoys sent by Tehran from Iraq, he added in information confirmed by a Western intelligence source.

Iran has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years where it now has a foothold in most state-controlled areas where thousands of its militias and local paramilitary groups are under its command, Western intelligence sources say.

Citing a military source, SANA said Israel had carried out the air strike targeting the container storage area causing a fire leading to "big material damages".

Fire fighters were working to extinguish the blaze, said Head of the Latakia fire brigade and. Syrian state TV footage showed flames and smoke in the container area.

Citing its correspondent, state-run broadcaster al-Ikhbariya said a number of residential buildings, a hospital and a number of shops and tourist facilities had been damaged by the power of the blasts.

Russia, which has been Assad's most powerful ally during the war, operates an air base at Hmeimim some 20 kms away from Latakia.

 

US war mongering to touch new highs

On Monday Joe Biden, President of United States signed a sweeping US$768 billion defense policy bill, setting up top lines and policy for the Pentagon. Biden signed the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after Congress scrambled to pass the annual bill earlier this month.

In a statement, the president said, “The bill provides vital benefits and enhances access to justice for military personnel and their families, and includes critical authorities to support our country’s national defense.”

The House passed the bill by an overwhelmingly bipartisan 363-70 vote in early December, and the Senate later passed the bill by a bipartisan 88-11 vote. 

Rep. Adam Smith, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that there’s a lot to be proud of in this bill.

The US$768.2 billion compromise bill came after efforts to pass an earlier version of the bill in the Senate hit several snags, including failures to reach agreements on which amendments would receive floor votes.

The NDAA provides US$740 billion for the Department of Defense, which is US$25 billion more than what the president requested for the agency for fiscal 2022.  It also includes US$27.8 billion for defense-related activities in the Department of Energy and another US$378 million for other defense-related activities. 

While passing the NDAA is an important step, the measure does not authorize any spending; meaning Congress still needs to pass an appropriations bill.

Earlier this month, Congress passed a short-term continuing resolution which funds the government through Feb. 18.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said earlier this month that passing a full-year continuing resolution, as opposed to a full-year appropriations bill, would be an unprecedented move that would cause enormous, if not irreparable, damage for a wide range of bipartisan priorities." 

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had warned that a full-year continuing resolution would put defense spending at US$35 billion less than what the NDAA provides for.

“We can all stand up here on the Senate floor and back at home, declaring our unwavering support for our troops and their families, and claiming to support a strong national defense, but until we put our money where our mouth is and provide the funding we say we support, those words ring hollow,” Leahy said in a statement. 

Among its provisions, the NDAA includes a 2.7 percent increase in military basic pay, which the White House recommended.

This year’s defense policy bill also includes major changes to how the military prosecutes certain crimes, like sexual assault. For those crimes, like rape, murder and manslaughter, the decision to prosecute would be made outside of the chain of command.

However, commanders would still have authority to conduct trials, pick jury members, approve witnesses and grant immunity.

The bill also weighs in on the military’s vaccine mandate, directing that service members who are discharged for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine get at least a general discharge under honorable conditions. 

But in his statement, Biden pointed to several provisions in the bill that he was against. Among them, he urged Congress to eliminate provisions that restrict the use of funds to transfer detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

He also opposed provisions that require sharing with Congress information regarding the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the threat of Iranian-backed militias to US personnel in Iraq and the Middle East.

The measures would include highly sensitive classified information, Biden said, that could reveal critical intelligence sources or military operational plans.