Saudis inspect embassy premises in Tehran

A Saudi technical team, headed by Nasser Al-Ghannoum visited the headquarters of the Saudi embassy in Tehran on Sunday, the second day of its visit to the Iranian capital. The delegation held consultations on the mechanisms for reopening the Kingdom’s diplomatic missions in Iran.

The Saudi delegation arrived in Iran three days after a meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir Abdollahian in Beijing. The foreign ministers had signed a memorandum of understanding to resume diplomatic relations between the two countries, nearly a month after the tripartite agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and Iran, under the mediation of China, in this respect.

The state-run Iranian ISNA news agency reported that the Saudi team reached on Sunday morning to inspect the embassy, after meeting with Mehdi Honardoust, the chief of protocol at the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

In the same vein, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that its technical team will travel to Saudi Arabia, later this week, to inspect the Iranian embassy in Riyadh, and to prepare arrangements for the reopening of the Iranian embassy, ISNA reported.

Alireza Enayati, director general of Iran’s Foreign Ministry Office for Gulf Affairs, said that the Iranian delegation is putting the final touches on its visit to Saudi Arabia to reopen the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah. “We held preliminary consultations with Saudi Arabia. The Iranian team will be divided into two groups. One is in Riyadh, and the other is heading to Jeddah,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Enayati as saying.

About the date of the visit and resumption of the flight service, he said: “It is likely to be at the end of this week. Flights will resume between the two countries, according to the agreement concluded with Saudi Arabia.”

For its part, Tasnim news agency, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said that the technical team will head to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The first official meeting between the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing received considerable attention from Iranian analysts and observers, particularly regarding China’s growing role in the region. Despite domestic criticism of the policy of turning to the East, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called for pursuing this policy to nullify the effects of US sanctions.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, former Iranian parliament deputy and member of its National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said that China is playing its own game of hegemony, in the way America has done during the last 100 years to be present in the international arena. “Both China and Saudi Arabia are counting the achievements of the tripartite agreement but unfortunately Iran did not properly pave the way for gaining achievements from this agreement. Saudis acted pragmatically in increasing the shares of their large companies, and moved towards ending the Yemen issue, but nothing happened on the part of Iran,” he said while noting, “the weakness of the political agreements is due to the lack of economic support.” However, Falahatpisheh, who is close to the reformists, believed that the tripartite agreement was reached in a suitable political climate.

News websites critical of the current government’s policy of distancing itself from the nuclear agreement continued to assert that the success of the agreement with Saudi Arabia, especially in the economic aspect, depends on reviving the nuclear agreement.

For its part, the Jamaran news website quoted international affairs analyst Ali Bigdeli as saying, “We are forced to solve the problem of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in some way, and Saudi Arabia cannot invest in Iran without the nuclear agreement. There is no other way to revive our dying economy, and it is getting worse, every day, with the appreciation of the currency and the severe economic problems we face,” he said while noting that people are in a dilemma as there is no way to solve it, and that Russia cannot revive Iranian economy in any way.

Regarding the possibility of commercial exchanges with Saudi Arabia, even in the absence of any agreement with regard to the nuclear issue he said, “There may be superficial exchanges, but they are not important. It is important that our relations be with a country by which we can organize our failed economy,” he added.

On its part, Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper highlighted major trade cooperation areas between Tehran and Riyadh, which has been circulated in Iranian circles since the announcement of the resumption of relations. “The latest reports showed that there is high potential for attracting capital in various fields of industry, mining, tourism and agriculture in Iran. There are also interests for Saudi businessmen in mineral products, medical tourism in Iran and Iranian tourism, in addition to the ability to enter Saudi food products to Iran, besides the plenty of Saudi investment opportunities,” the website pointed out.

Is a New Gold Standard Possible?

The price of gold is once again testing its all-time highs as both individuals and institutions flee the chaos of our times toward safety. What John Maynard Keynes decried as the barbarous relic just keeps coming back. The worse government policies become and the more deranged and dysfunctional the Federal Reserve is revealed to be, the more people are turning to time-tested monetary truth.

In a sense, the price of gold can often work as a barometer of confidence in the central managers. The higher it goes, the less trust in the system there truly is. For a century, the elites have wanted gold to disappear from the subject of money. But it keeps not happening.

Like clockwork, there’s renewed interest even in the old gold standard.

“Rep. Alex Mooney —joined by Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar —introduced the Gold Standard Restoration Act, to facilitate the repegging of the volatile Federal Reserve note to a fixed weight of gold bullion. Upon passage, the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve are given 24 months to publicly disclose all gold holdings and gold transactions, after which time the Federal Reserve note dollar would be formally repegged to a fixed weight of gold at its then-market price.”

The timing is more brilliant than it appears. The dollar as the international reserve currency—which it has been since 1944—is newly under threat. China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil, with other nations joining, have all agreed to work toward independence from the dollar.

The Biden administration has so heavily politicized its use as a reserve currency, even going so far as outright confiscation of assets owned by Russians. US policy is using the dollar as a weapon, and it should come as no surprise that many nations don’t like that.

There’s the additional and very real threat, too, of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in which the Biden administration has shown great interest. This would permit a massive invasion by the government and its monetary oligarchs into our private lives and permit new levels of population control that will make the Bill of Rights a dead letter.

If there were ever a time to push for a new gold standard, it’s now, although it should have happened 43 years ago, when the Reagan administration had the chance to do so. This might have been the key to preserving newly restored American freedoms rather than allowing the central bank to preside over the wreckage of this country.

The presidential campaign of 1980 was a turning point for the United States, away from the economic malaise of a highly regulated industrial sector with a dollar rapidly declining in value and toward deregulation and sounder money. Looking back, the dramatic policy turn of the Reagan presidency prepared the groundwork for decades of prosperity. It built a capital base so strong that it seemed nothing could wreck it.

An unfulfilled part of the 1980 Republican Party platform—pushed by David Stockman and George Gilder—was an endorsement of a gold standard; that is, the dollar redefined in terms of gold instead of the floating paper nothing it had been since the catastrophic reforms made by Richard Nixon that unleashed a decade of inflation.

That part of the 1980 platform was neglected. As a result of the Nixon reform and the failure to reverse that disaster, the dollar of Aug. 13, 1971, is now worth about 13 cents.

With a gold standard in place and the end of the Cold War only eight years away, the United States was perfectly positioned to reestablish itself as the peaceful commercial Republic that it was founded to be rather than the entrenched global empire it became after 1990.

With the seemingly existential threat of Soviet communism out of the way, the United States could have chosen George Washington’s path as he stated in his farewell address, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

Instead of that path, the United States under the first George Bush immediately set out on another imperial crusade for democracy and nation-building. No longer restrained by Cold War calculations and mutually assured destruction, the United States was the winner in the struggle, throwing away its chance for peace and prosperity with wars in Haiti, Panama, and Iraq, stirring up hatreds in faraway lands that, a decade later, came home in horrifying acts of terrorism on our own soil. A whole region of the world now lies in ruins, and Europe is destabilized with war refugees.

Why did the United States take this course when it so obviously could have been otherwise? The short answer is that it could. And the reason it could is that the Federal Reserve’s paper money regime would pay the bills. Paper money has been the handmaiden of war and empire since the ancient world, and the worst example is the 20th century itself.

It’s highly doubtful that there ever would have been a thing called a “world war”—grotesquely called the Great War at the time—had both Europe and the United States not adopted central banks. The monetary math wouldn’t have made it possible. They would have chosen diplomacy over war.

The astute economist Benjamin Anderson proved it in his postwar treatise on the subject. It’s true that most currencies in the world back then were backed by gold, but the critical service the central banks provided was to become a buyer of last resort of government debt. This became a grave moral hazard back then, just as it is today.

But let’s return to 1980. Instead of a gold standard, we got better and wiser money management by the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker, who wrenched the paper excess out of the system and set the dollar up for decades of relatively low inflation. He did nothing, however, to put an end to policy discretion.

Instead of following through on the gold standard, Reagan appointed a commission to study the issue. We know what that means! Of course, the commission was packed with paper-money fans with the gold-standard partisans in the minority. The minority report of that commission remains a genuine classic of monetary analysis. The lead author was none other than Ron Paul, who has been fighting for sound money throughout his entire career.

The case for a gold standard is bound up with the case for a limited government that follows the Constitution and protects the rights of the people. That’s precisely the problem that people have with the idea. It would put a hard stop on Federal Reserve monetary discretion. It would also require that the whole of the federal government balance its budget the same way that states have to today. Lacking a central bank with the power to print unto infinity, vast numbers of the debates we have today about federal policy, domestic and foreign, would melt away.

The great flaw in the gold standard, however, isn’t its logic or virtue but its political and managerial probability. The agenda has always required that the managers of the system as it exists also come around to the view that they should have less power and less discretion. It depends fundamentally on the existing monetary oligarchs choosing a path that’s good for society rather than themselves. That, sadly, seems quite unlikely.

A path even wiser than a centralized gold standard would be the complete denationalization of money itself. This could happen with a repeal of legal tender laws and a wholesale liberalization of both gold as money and digital money that works like gold, such as Bitcoin and its many decentralized cousins. We have the technology to make this happen. What’s missing is the political will.

As in 1980, we’re at another turning point. With the dollar as the international reserve currency facing its biggest challenge since World War II and the domestic value of paper money losing its reliability by the day, we do need dramatic reform. At this stage, we face a choice between more tyranny enabled by the nightmare of a CBDC and monetary deregulation that would allow markets and people to choose their own preferred means of exchange.

Courtesy: The Epoch Times

Rubio responds to Macron’s call to break away from United States

Sen. Marco Rubio has condemned French President Emanuel Macron for appearing to advocate that Europe should distance itself from the United States over a possible Chinese military aggression against Taiwan.

In a roughly two-minute video posted on Twitter Sunday, Rubio asked whether Macron speaks for all of Europe when he suggested that the EU should not pick sides between the United States and China over Taiwan.

Further arguing European nations should break away from the United States and avoid getting involved in crises that are not ours to build Europe’s strategic autonomy concept.

While returning from a three-day state visit to China after meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping, Macron told Politico during an interview that the EU needs to reduce its US reliance and avoid becoming America’s followers.

Responding to Macron’s interview, Rubio said that Europe—particularly France—has relied heavily on the United States for decades for their defense.

“This is a good moment for us to ask Europe Does Macron speak for all of Europe, is Macron now the head of Europe, is he now the most powerful leader in Europe? Rubio questioned, then noting if that were the case, “There are some things that have to change.”

“In fact, when Macron tried to play global superpower and sent troops to North Africa to fight terrorists, he couldn’t even get his own troops there,” he added. “We had to fly them there, and we had to fly them back; he couldn’t even get his own troops there.”

“So, if they’re gonna break off on their own and follow Macron’s lead, that’s going to save us a lot of money,” the Florida lawmaker continued.

Rubio also addressed the United States military assistance to Ukraine, saying Americans have spent a lot of our taxpayer money on the European conflict.

He also stressed that he supports the cause because he believes it’s in the national interests of the United States to be allies to our allies.

“But, if our allies’ position—if, in fact, Macron speaks for all of Europe, and their position now is they’re not gonna pick sides between the US and China over Taiwan—maybe we shouldn’t be picking sides either. Maybe we should basically say we’re gonna focus on Taiwan and the threats China poses, and you guys handle Ukraine and Europe,” Rubio said.

“So, we need to find out, does Macron speak for Macron, or does Macron speak for Europe?” he added. “And we need to get the answer to that pretty quickly because China is very excited about what he said.”

 

Chabahar Free Zone special attraction for investors

In this century, transit and routes for transporting goods and passengers have become extremely important. One of the ways that countries can increase their economic and political power and consequently their national power at a lower cost is the optimal use of the strategic position.

The location of a country next to the open sea, oceans, important straits, etc. provide capacities, if properly planned and used, can help in creating economic prosperity and compensating for many of the country's deficiencies in other areas.

Iran's strategic position enables it to play a role as an important transit route in the transit of goods in the east-west and north-south routes.

This issue causes countries without access to open waters, including Afghanistan and Central Asian countries, to depend on Iran more than before.

The transit of goods from Iran through rail and road transport and then sea transport through the port of Chabahar plays an important role in attracting investment, developing industry, and creating employment, especially in the eastern regions of the country.

Lying on the coast of the Gulf of Oman in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province, Chabahar is the country’s only oceanic port and given its strategic location in the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) development of the port is of high significance for Iran, so the government has some major projects to create multi-dimensional transportation facilities in this port.

As announced by the managing director of Chabahar Free Zone Organization, US$8 billion of investment was made in different sectors in this zone during the past Iranian calendar year 1401 (ended on March 20).

Amir Moqadam said that the result of the actions taken in the field of investment attraction last year was that the total investments made reached from US$4.9 billion at the end of 1400 to US$8 billion at the end of 1401, and for 1402 it is targeted to reach US$14 billion.

Chabahar port has two significant docks, namely Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Kalantari, which are mostly referred to as ports, i.e. Shahid Beheshti Port and Shahid Kalantari Port.

Development of Shahid Beheshti Port, construction of Chabahar International Airport, and building Chabahar-Zahedan (center of Sistan-Baluchestan Province) railway are three of the major projects to make Chabahar a complete logistics platform.

In addition, Chabahar Free Zone has been suggested as a transit and logistic gateway for Iran's domestic market which, while reducing the cost and time of transportation it has also provided profitable economic opportunities in the development of logistics facilities.

Chabahar Free Zone is a multi-purpose zone with educational, industrial, tourism and transportation sectors.

Considering all the above-mentioned points, making investment in this zone is a necessity.

It is worth mentioning that one of the major potentials of Chabahar free zone, which makes investment in this area very profitable, is the existence of cheap workforce in all fields, especially in the field of industries.

This has caused this area to have a high potential for establishing factories and industrial units.

 

Russia and Iran conspiring to weaken US dollar, alleges Israel

Russian Presidential Aide Igor Levitin, who is currently on a two-day trip in Tehran, met with the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Council Ali Shamkani, and the two discussed ways to thwart Western sanctions.

During the meeting, Shamkhani expressed his satisfaction with the volume of economic cooperation between Russia and Iran, praising the path that started to reduce the influence of the dollar in regional and international economic exchanges.

These plans, he said, "will limit the dominance of the West over the world economy to the minimum."

The representatives also discussed the ongoing joint project, the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC), which Shamkhani described as having a decisive role in changing the geometry of goods transit in the region.

The NSTC is a transport network for moving freights between Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan and other countries in Asia and Europe.

The transport corridor aims at creating new networks to avoid the US and the West as sanctions grow on Iran.

Levitin, for his part, expressed Moscow's readiness to invest in Iran's steel, oil and petrochemical industries.

Despite Russian efforts to weaken the US dollar, the currency has continued to gain this week, while the Russian rouble is having the worst week of the year so far.

The Russian rouble suffered its worst week against the dollar this year, tumbling on a lack of foreign currency in Moscow and on the sale of Western businesses in Russia, despite gaining slightly on Friday afternoon as traders locked in profits.

The rouble RUBUTSTN=MCX skidded more than 2% against the US dollar on Friday to an intraday low of 83.50, its weakest since April last year, and fell more than 2% against the euro to an intraday low of 91.32 against EURRUBTN=MCX.

The rouble had nosedived to 113 per US dollar after President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but the central bank and finance ministry helped stabilize the currency, and it strengthened to 50 per dollar in July 2022.

The West then imposed a price cap on Russian oil - the lifeblood of the Russian economy - late last year, since which the rouble has weakened from about 60 per US dollar to more than 80 US dollar this week.

Traders said the Russian currency has come under pressure recently from a cocktail of problems including the sale of Western assets to domestic investors, which stoked demand for dollars, while lower oil prices in March cut the country's export revenue.

The rouble is the third-worst performer among global currencies so far this year, behind only the Egyptian pound and the Argentine peso, Reuters calculations show.

"The Russian currency remains in fundamentally weak conditions," said Vladimir Evstifeev, head of analysis at Bank Zenik. He said exporters were reluctant to swap their export revenues for roubles in the expectation that the dollar would strengthen while importers were buying foreign currency in the expectation of a bounce back in consumer confidence.

"The rate of weakening of the Russian currency is increasing, so it is likely that the authorities will get involved in the situation on the foreign exchange market and conduct a series of verbal interventions in support of the rouble."

OIC vehemently denounces Israeli assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has strongly denounced the hazardous escalation by Israeli occupation forces and terrorist settlers who repeatedly attacked the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque during the month of Ramadan.

The OIC issued a communiqué on Saturday following an unusual open-ended meeting of the organization’s Executive Committee. The communiqué decried ongoing Israeli aggression on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The full text of the communiqué is as follows:

The Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) reaffirmed the centrality of the Palestinian Cause, with Al-Quds Ash-Sharif and its sanctities at its heart, for the entire Islamic Ummah, and the eternal attachment of Muslims all over the world to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first of the two Qiblas and the third of the Holy Mosques, as well as affirming the Arab and Islamic identity of occupied East Al-Quds, the capital of the State of Palestine and dismissing any prejudice to that in any way:

1. Condemns in the strongest terms the dangerous escalation by the Israeli occupation forces and terrorist settlers by repeatedly storming the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif during the blessed month of Ramadan, culminating in the atrocious brutal attack on the night of Ramadan 14 on worshipers and those stationed in its courtyards while performing their prayers and rituals, including women and children, wounding and arresting hundreds of them, and damaging the Qibli Mosque in a flagrant provocation to the feelings of Muslims all over the world, an attack on the existing legal and historical situation, and a severe violation of international law and relevant United Nations resolutions,

2. Warns of the consequences of the continued infringement by the Israeli occupation authorities, their officials, and terrorist settlers on the sanctity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif, including continuous provocations, abuses, daily severe assaults, and incursions in gross violation of international law and unprecedented tampering with the existing historical and legal situation to perpetuate the temporal and spatial division of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and stresses that the Israeli occupation has no sovereignty over any part of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif and that Muslim worshipers have the absolute right to pray freely and safely in and around it, at any time, without any hindrance or violence inflicted on them,

3. Holds Israel, the occupying power, accountable for the consequences of these dangerous and provocative actions of its racist government, as it continues to seek, through systematic brutal attacks, deliberate provocation, and repeated incitement, to inflame the situation and provoke a religious confrontation with unforeseen consequences, warns of the possible repercussions on international peace and security, and calls on the international community, and in particular the UN Security Council, in its capacity as responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security, to assume its responsibilities and take urgent action and necessary measures to deter and stop the dangerous Israeli escalation and all other illegal and provocative measures and policies that affect the occupied city of Al-Quds and the sanctity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif, without selectivity or double standards,

4. Appreciates the positions of the countries that expressed their rejection and condemnation of the provocative and aggressive Israeli incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, calls on them to take practical steps, including imposing sanctions on the Israeli colonial regime, to stop these practices and all its illegal measures and policies, and stresses in this context the responsibility of the state parties in the Geneva Conventions, that Israel, the illegal colonial occupying Power, must be held accountable for all its violations of international humanitarian law, whether by its government officials, military forces, or extremist settlers,

5. Pays tribute to the steadfast Palestinian citizens in the city of Al-Quds, and affirms its standing with them and supporting their heroic steadfastness in all possible ways. It also affirms the sovereignty of the Palestinian people over Al-Quds Ash-Sharif and all its holy places and the old town of Al-Quds and its walls and that all measures taken or intended to be taken by the Israeli colonial occupation authorities, which seek to change the character and legal status of the city or its demographic composition, are null and void and have no legal effect,

6. Affirms the historical Jordanian Hashemite Custodianship over the Islamic and Christian holy places in the city of Al-Quds and its role in protecting these sanctities and preserving the existing legal and historical status therein and emphasizes that the Department of Al-Quds Endowments and Affairs of the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif affiliated to the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf, Islamic Affairs, and Holy Places is the authority authorized to manage the affairs of the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif,

7. Reaffirms the important role of the Al-Quds Committee under the leadership of His Majesty King Mohamed VI, of Morocco, in challenging the detrimental policies implemented by the Israeli occupation authorities in Al-Quds Al-Sharif to change the character and legal status of the city as well as its demographic, cultural and historical composition; and values the role of Bayt Mal Al-Quds Agency.

8. Calls on the OIC Member States and General Secretariat to take urgent action to address these severe attacks and activate the mechanisms stipulated in its relevant resolutions to move at all levels and send urgent messages to the concerned international bodies, including the UN Security Council, reflecting the OIC positions in this regard and stressing the request to provide international protection for the

Palestinian people and the occupied city of Al-Quds Ash-Sharif and its sanctities, specifically the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif, in the face of illegal attempts to change their current legal and historical situation,

9. Reaffirms the importance of continuing coordination and cooperation among the OIC, the League of Arab States (LAS), and the African Union (AU) to protect the occupied city of Al-Quds against systematic Israeli policies and attacks.

10. Calls on the ambassadors of the OIC Member States to act and convey the contents of this communique to the capitals of influential countries around the world.

11. Calls on the Islamic Group at the relevant international organizations to act and initiate the necessary consultations and measures to confront and stop the systematic Israeli aggressions in the occupied city of Al-Quds.

12. Affirms its continued follow-up of all developments related to the Holy City of Al-Quds, specifically the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/ Al-Haram Al-Qudsi Ash-Sharif, and to take the appropriate steps in this regard, as stipulated in the resolutions of the Islamic summits and the Councils of Foreign Ministers.

 

Saudi oil derivatives grant arrives in Yemen

According to Saudi Gazette, the fourth batch of the Saudi Oil Derivatives Grant for Yemen, consisting of 150,000 metric tons of diesel and 100,000 metric tons of mazut, has arrived at the oil port in Aden.

This initiative is part of Saudi Arabia's ongoing efforts to support the Yemeni people, in response to a request by the Yemeni government to help provide oil derivatives to operate over 70 power generation plants across Yemen.

The directive to provide this grant was issued by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman.

The grant is a testament to the Kingdom's commitment to achieving security, stability, and development in Yemen and is an extension of previous grants amounting to US$4.2 billion.

The Saudi Oil Derivatives Grant is part of the Saudi Program for the Development and Reconstruction of Yemen (SDRPY), which has implemented 229 projects and initiatives across Yemeni governorates to serve Yemenis in seven main sectors, including education, health, water, energy, transport, agriculture, and fishery, as well as building the capacity of government institutions, in addition to other development programs.