Will Putin be arrested if he attends BRICS meeting in South Africa?

BRICS foreign ministers on Thursday asserted their bloc's ambition to rival Western powers but their talks in South Africa were overshadowed by questions over whether Russia's president would be arrested if he attended a summit in August.

South Africa's foreign minister Naledi Pandor said her country was mulling options if Vladimir Putin, the subject of a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), came to the planned BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

As a member of the ICC, South Africa would theoretically be required to arrest Putin, and Pandor was bombarded with questions about that as she arrived for a first round of talks with representatives from Brazil, Russia, India and China.

"The answer is the president (Cyril Ramaphosa) will indicate what the final position of South Africa is. As matters stand an invitation has been issued to all (BRICS) heads of state," she said.

At a news conference later, the ministers side-stepped a barrage of questions about the Putin issue.

The ICC accused Putin in March of the war crime of forcibly deporting children from Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. Moscow denies the allegations. South Africa had invited Putin in January.

Putin has not confirmed his plans, with the Kremlin only saying Russia would take part at the proper level.

The ministers sought to focus attention on their ambition to build up their influence in a multi-polar world.

India's Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke of the concentration of economic power which he said leaves too many nations at the mercy of too few, and of the need to reform global decision-making including by the United Nations Security Council.

"Old ways cannot address new situations. We are a symbol of change. We must act," he said.

Once viewed as a loose association of disparate emerging economies, BRICS has in recent years taken more concrete shape, driven initially by Beijing and, since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, with added impetus from Moscow.

The bloc launched a New Development Bank in 2015, though that has stopped funding projects in Russia to comply with sanctions imposed by Western countries following the invasion of Ukraine.

Pandor said a senior executive from the bank had briefed the ministers about the potential use of alternative currencies to the current internationally traded currencies.

She said the aim was to ensure that we do not become victim to sanctions that have secondary effects on countries that have no involvement in issues that have led to those unilateral sanctions.

The ministers also discussed plans to potentially admit new members to the club. Pandor said more work was needed to make that possible and she hoped a report on the matter would be ready by the August summit.

China's Vice Minister Ma Zhaoxu said his country was happy about the prospect of more countries joining BRICS as it would increase the influence of the bloc and give it more power to serve the interests of developing countries.

The BRICS bloc "was inclusive ... in sharp contrast to some countries' small circle, and so I believe the enlargement of BRICS will be beneficial to the BRICS countries," he said.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud were both present in Cape Town to participate in the BRICS meeting, which continues on Friday.

Their two countries, along with Venezuela, Argentina, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates are among those that have either formally applied to join BRICS or expressed interest, officials said.

 

Saudi Arabia and UAE getting out of US hegemony

I am delighted to share with my readers an article written by David Ottaway of Wilson Center. This should be an eye opener for the Arab monarchies. Their growing tilt towards China and Russia challenges the US hegemony.

Much to the anxiety of policymakers in Washington, the two most important Arab partners in the Persian Gulf to the United States are asserting studied neutrality in the emerging Cold War with Russia and China.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are fast expanding their relations with China while declaring their non-alignment in the new feuds over Ukraine and Taiwan.

This past December, Saudi Arabia signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement with China. The UAE and China signed a similar partnership accord in 2018.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) warmly welcomed President Xi Jinping to Riyadh for the signing of what the Chinese called an “epoch-making milestone in the history of China-Arab relations.”

The UAE became the first Gulf Arab nation to purchase Chinese military aircraft, including trainer jets in likely preparation for flying China’s most advanced warplanes, the FC-31 stealth fighter.

The two Gulf Arab monarchies have paid scant attention to US calls for economic sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Nor have they abided President Biden’s pleas to make up for the loss of Russian oil in order to lower gasoline prices for American consumers.

To the contrary, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has cut production by 3.6 million barrels a day over the past six months, led by Saudi Arabia in close collaboration with Russia.

The question arises whether these Arab monarchies can afford a policy of non-alignment with a tilt toward China in face of pressure from Washington to stay in its corner. Their security still depends heavily on the US and the vast bulk of their arms remain “Made in America.” China has scant military presence in the Gulf and has so far offered no security assurances of any kind.

On the other hand, neither has the United States ever committed itself in writing to the “ironclad” guarantee of “a swift, overwhelming and decisive response” that President Biden pledged to South Korea in April in case of a nuclear attack from North Korea.

The current administration, like those before it, has limited itself to myriad verbal reassurances of US aid to help the Gulf Arab monarchies help themselves.

The only commitment Biden has made to Gulf Arab states’ security is to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb. Still, decades of efforts to convince the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to form a US-backed common air defense system against Iran have failed.

There is a long history to end Saudi Arabia’s lopsided dependence on the US and to cultivate its relationship with China in particular as a counterbalance.

In 2004, the former Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, explained to me, only half-jokingly, the Saudi vision of nonalignment in these terms, Saudi Arabia was not tied to the US in an unbreakable Catholic marriage. It was, he reminded me, a Muslim country with the right to have up to four wives at once, so long as it treated them all equally.

At the time, Saudi Arabia had long since reached out to China to court a second wife. In 1985, then Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, outraged the Reagan administration by traveling incognito to Beijing to open negotiations on the purchase of Chinese medium-range ballistic missiles, the East Wind CSS-2, capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Saudi Arabia did not yet have diplomatic relations with the Communist country at the time. The Saudis even managed to smuggle the missiles into the kingdom without the knowledge of the US government. The CIA only discovered the Saudi deceit in early 1988, touching off a full-scale crisis in US-Saudi relations and nearly triggering Israeli military retaliation.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia finally established diplomatic relations with China just before the outbreak of the 1990-91 Gulf War when the US dispatched 500,000 soldiers to defend the Kingdom against Iraq and liberate Kuwait from its occupying troops.

Although, it waited until 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union—and demise of communism—to reactivate its long-frozen ties with Moscow.

Today, China is Saudi Arabia’s number one trading partner and customer of its oil exports. Russia, the world’s biggest non-OPEC exporter, cooperates closely with the Kingdom to maintain high oil prices at US expense.

Neither China nor Russia looms as a security threat to the Gulf Arab states who are instead concerned with Iran, particularly Saudi Arabia, which views Tehran as its main rival for Gulf primacy. In the face of Iranian expansion and aggression in the Gulf and beyond, the US security umbrella has proven increasingly leaky.

There was no US response when an Iranian drone and missile barrage on Saudi oil facilities knocked out half of the kingdom’s oil production in September 2019.

Then US president Donald Trump, declared he was in no rush to go to war with Iran and observed, to the consternation of the Saudis that was an attack on Saudi Arabia. That wasn’t an attack on us.

Nor did the Biden administration react when Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen carried out several drone and missile attacks on the UAE in January 2022. In both cases, the US response was limited to sending Patriot missiles to bolster their defenses against future incidents.

The six Gulf Arab monarchies, though grouped together in the GCC, have no common defense strategy or military relationship with the US. Only three of them—Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar—rank as a Major Non-NATO Ally.

Only four—Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and the UAE—have defense cooperation agreements with Washington mainly to facilitate US arms sales and military training. Although, Qatar does hosts US Central Command’s regional headquarters and Bahrain the US Fifth Fleet.

The outlier is Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s military keystone and America’s oldest Middle East partner dating back to 1945. It has never wanted a permanent American military presence in the Kingdom, or to become a Major Non-NATO ally, and has not even asked for a formal defense cooperation agreement.

It has also always looked askance at US efforts to form a collective compact with its Gulf Arab partners, such as when former President Trump unsuccessfully sought to launch a Middle East Strategic Alliance.

Nonetheless, the Saudi military is armed to the teeth with tens of billions of dollars of US arms and hopes to buy the most sophisticated US warplane, the F-35.

It has reportedly, for the first time, sought a written US security guarantee against future Iranian attacks. This comes amid complex negotiations over a deal with the Biden administration to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

The obstacles to adopting a nonaligned posture with a tilt toward China have become painfully apparent in the Biden administration’s two-year-long negotiations with the UAE over its purchase of the F-35 fighter jet. The UAE is arguably America’s closest GCC military partner; it was the only one to send soldiers and warplanes to fight alongside American forces in Afghanistan. Still, the F-35 talks remain inconclusive because of US security concerns over the UAE’s expanding military ties with China. These include, according to US officials, an indication the UAE is allowing China to build a naval base there.

At some point soon, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will have to decide whether to live with a leaky security arrangement led by the US or take their chances with China or Russia. Buying Chinese or Russian arms is certain to incite Washington’s wrath and make purchase of advanced American weaponry ever more problematic. But it remains very unlikely Chinese or Russian arms will resolve Saudi’s security dilemma.

China also has extensive economic interests and a comprehensive strategic agreement with Iran and, so far, has stuck its own strict nonalignment policy in the Iran-Saudi rivalry. Russia, on the other hand, has become closer to Iran militarily, selling its advanced SU-35 fighter jet to Tehran and buying Iranian drones for its war in Ukraine in return. The US security umbrella may be leaky but neither China nor Russia seems likely to offer even that.

 

 

Yemen: Operation to salvage FSO Safer gets under way

Yemeni Foreign Minister Ahmad Bin Mubarak said the groundwork has started for salvaging the decaying FSO Safer supertanker and averting an oil spill in the southern part of the Red Sea.

A technical team from SMIT Salvage, a leading Dutch dredging and maritime service provider, has arrived at Ras Isa Port, the minister said in a press release, noting that an alternative tanker will arrive in the coming few weeks.

The FSO Safer salvage operation is the fruit of years-long cooperation between the Yemeni government on one hand, the United Nations and international partners on the other, he said.

Bin Mubarak attributed the long delay of the operation to the stubbornness of the Houthi militias who kept rejecting less expensive solutions to the problem.

Since the Yemen Pledging Conference, held in The Netherlands in May last year, until the second event, co-hosted by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in early May 2023, the UN has raised US$107 million for salvaging the supertanker.

The UN operation aims, at the first stage, to unload up to 1.14 million barrels of oil from the decaying tanker into another one, now en route to site.

The second stage envisages providing a permanent alternative to Safer which has been moored in western coast of Yemen since mid-1980s.

FSO Safer, a floating storage facility, holds oil coming from Safer onshore oilfields in Maarib governorate as a prelude to unloading it to oil tankers.

The maintenance of the facility has come to a standstill since 2015 after the Houthis rebels denied the UN experts access to site which risked triggering a huge environment crisis in the region.

UN officials have been warning for years that the Red Sea and Yemen’s coastline was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.

The Ndeavor tanker, with a technical team from Boskalis/ SMIT, is in place at the Safer tanker off the coast of Yemen’s Ras Isa, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen David Gressley said on Twitter from on board the Ndeavor.

The war in Yemen caused suspension of maintenance operations on the Safer in 2015. The UN has warned its structural integrity has significantly deteriorated and it is at risk of exploding.

The Safer is set to transfer its oil to a replacement tanker, the Nautica, which set sail from China in early April. The salvage operation cannot be paid for by the sale of the oil because it is not clear who owns it, the UN has said.

“Work at sea will start very soon. Additional funding is still important to finish the process,” the UN said on its Yemen Twitter account

Japan partially shuts down refining capacity

Japan has shut down one million barrels per day (bpd) refining capacity temporarily out of 3.3 bpd due to turnarounds and technical issues across, this translates into shutting down 31% of the country's overall capacity.

Japan's largest refiner Eneos has shut down 35% of its oil refining capacity, shutting down four plants with a total capacity of 618,100 bpd. The company has an overall 1.7 million bpd capacity across its ten units, which accounts for over 52% of Japan's total oil refining capacity.

Eneos shut its 145,000 bpd Sendai refinery on May 28 and its 141,000 bpd Sakai plant on May 17 for turnarounds. The two refineries are expected to restart operations in mid-July and late-July, respectively.

The company was also forced to shut its 203,100 bpd Kashima refinery on May 24 and 129,000 bpd Chiba plant on May 12 because of technical problems. The restart dates of the Kashima and Chiba plants are still unknown.

Another refiner Idemitsu also shut its 190,000 bbd Chiba refinery on April 28 for a scheduled maintenance. It is expected to last around two months, said market participants. Idemitsu's 70,000 bpd Keihin refinery operated by Toa Oil has delayed resuming operations after it started a turnaround in January this year.

Fuji Oil on May 23 has halted operations at its 143,000 bpd Sodegaura plant for a turnaround, with the shutdown planned for a month.

Cosmo Oil was forced to halt the 102,000 bpd No.2 crude distillation unit at its 177,000 bpd Chiba plant on May 16 because of some technical difficulties but resumed operations on May 28.

Japanese refiners have struggled with stable refining operations as their plants are getting old. Ageing refineries cause technical issues, and firms need more time for turnarounds to avoid unexpected shutdowns. Earthquakes also trigger technical issues at old refineries in Japan.

Eneos said earlier this month in its revised mid-term strategy that it has raised its budget for refinery maintenance during April 2023-March 2026 by 30% compared to the April 2020-March 2023 fiscal years, allocating US$3 billion to lift operating rates.

Lower runs also weighed on Eneos and Cosmo's profits from fossil fuel-related businesses in the 2022-23 fiscal year. Idemitsu's refinery issues also led to negative financial impacts, the firm stated in its April-December 2022 results.

 

United States: Bill passed raising debt ceiling

The House on Wednesday night passed a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling, overcoming vocal opposition from conservative and liberal lawmakers and bringing the country one step closer to avoiding an economy-rattling default ahead of next week’s deadline.

The legislation — which was crafted through negotiations between President Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and their designees — cleared the chamber in a bipartisan 314-117 vote and now heads to the Senate, where leaders are hoping for swift consideration as the default deadline looms.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the US could run out of cash to pay its bills by June 5, 2023, a situation that would plunge the country into its first-ever default — which economists and administration officials have warned would be catastrophic for the economy.

The bill suspends the debt limit through January 01, 2025, while also implementing a slew of cost-cutting measures including new spending caps over the next two years and a clawback of billions of dollars of unspent COVID-19 funds. It also includes permitting reform, puts an end date on Biden’s pause on student loan repayments and beefs up work requirements for federal assistance programs.

Wednesday’s vote marked a victory for McCarthy, who led his conference in passing a sweeping debt limit bill in April, got Biden to the negotiating table after the president for months insisted on a clean debt ceiling increase, and succeeded in narrowing those talks to just him, the president and their appointed deputies. McCarthy’s deputies then extracted concessions from the White House refused proposals like increasing taxes and worked furiously to sell the ultimate agreement to his conference.

“Passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act is a crucial first step for putting America back on track,” McCarthy said on the House floor Wednesday. “It does what is responsible for our children, what is possible in divided government, and what is required by our principles and promises.”

“Yes, it may not include everything we need to do,” he continued, “but it is absolutely what we need to do right now.”

But the deal simultaneously heightened the chances that McCarthy — who fought for his Speakership over 15 ballots in January — could face a challenge to his gavel from disgruntled conservatives who felt betrayed by the agreement he struck with the White House.

The vote also notched a win for Biden, who achieved the Democrats’ goal of punting any future debt limit increase beyond the 2024 presidential election.

Both camps, however, saw their fair share of opposition.

Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against the bill in the House — mostly liberals and conservatives protesting specific provisions of the bill. Their numbers, however, were never a threat to the bill’s passage because of a hodgepodge of moderates and leadership allies who — despite some acknowledging the bill wasn’t exactly what they wanted — threw their support behind the measure.

Conservatives, generally speaking, were frustrated with the lackluster magnitude of spending cuts in the agreement and the absence of several provisions that were in the debt limit bill — titled the Limit, Save, Grow Act — that House Republicans passed in April. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Tuesday estimated that the bipartisan debt limit deal could reduce projected deficits by about US$1.5 trillion over the next decade, a meager assessment compared to the roughly US$4.8 trillion the nonpartisan scorekeeper said the GOP bill would save.

Ahead of the high-stakes vote, more than 30 Republicans went on the record saying they would not vote for the bill, with some encouraging their GOP colleagues to join them in opposition.

“I want to be very clear: Not one Republican should vote for this deal. Not one,” Rep. Chip Roy said during a press conference Tuesday. “If you’re out there watching this, every one of my colleagues, I’m gonna be very clear: Not one Republican should vote for this deal.”

“It is a bad deal,” he added.

Liberals, on the other hand, voiced concern with the size and scope of spending cuts in the bill, and accused Republicans of holding the US economy hostage by forcing cost-cutting provisions in conjunction with the debt limit hike.

Work requirements also emerged as a particularly controversial topic throughout negotiations — which McCarthy dubbed a red line and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called a nonstarter. 

The legislation implements new work requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — who are aged 50 to 54 and do not have dependents, and it includes some additional work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

The bill does, however, include food stamp work requirement exemptions for individuals experiencing homelessness, veterans, and those 24 years or younger who were in foster care when they turned 18.

The CBO estimated that the work requirement changes would actually increase spending by US$2.1 billion over the next 10 years.

The bill came to the floor for a final vote on Wednesday after a drama-filled procedural vote that drove Democrats to trigger an emergency effort to help Republicans advance the bill.

While votes on rules, which govern debate over legislation, typically break along party lines, 29 Republicans broke from the GOP and opposed the rule on Wednesday as a way to boycott the debt limit bill. Shortly before the vote closed — as the bill was poised to be blocked — 52 Democrats threw their support behind the rule, bringing the final vote to 241-187 and allowing the debt limit bill to advance to the floor for a full vote.

“From the very beginning, House Democrats were clear that we would not allow extreme MAGA Republicans to default on our debt, crash the economy or trigger a job-killing recession. Under the leadership of President Joe Biden, Democrats kept our promise. And we will continue to do what is necessary to put people over politics,” Jeffries said on the House floor Wednesday.

He noted the last-minute scrambling on the debt limit bill.

“The question that remains right now is what will the House Republican majority do? It appears that you may have lost control of the floor of the House of Representatives. Earlier today 29 house republicans voted to default on our nation’s debt and against an agreement that you negotiated,” Jeffries said. “It’s an extraordinary act that indicates just the nature of the extremism that is out of control on the other side of the aisle.”

House passage of the Biden-McCarthy deal puts Congress closer to capping off a months-long saga over the debt ceiling, which began when the nation hit its borrowing limit on January 19, forcing the Treasury Department to begin implementing extraordinary measures so the country could continue paying its bills and stave off a default.

And it changes the political dynamics in the House GOP for McCarthy. 

McCarthy in January had made concessions and commitments on House rules and spending in order to secure the Speakership. The various factions of the conference had generally gotten along in the months since, but the right flank’s disappointment in the debt limit deal shattered that.

Rep. Dan Bishop even called for a vote to oust McCarthy as Speaker – though did not commit to making that move.

Allies of McCarthy hope that the discontent will blow over. 

“I think you’ll see that there’s still a broad cross-section of this conference that wants to try to figure out a way to do things together,” Rep. Dusty Johnson said.

McCarthy, for his part, is brushing aside the looming threat.

“Everybody has the ability to do what they want. But if you think I’m gonna wake up in the morning and be ever worried about that?” he told reporters Wednesday. “No, doesn’t bother me.”

 

 

Transition from OPEC to OPEC Plus

OPEC was founded in 1960 in Baghdad by Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela with an aim of coordinating petroleum policies and securing fair and stable prices. Now, it includes 13 countries, which are mainly from the Middle East and Africa. They produce around 30% of the world's oil.

There have been some challenges to OPEC's influence over the years, often resulting in internal divisions, and a global push towards cleaner energy sources and a move away from fossil fuels could ultimately diminish its dominance.

OPEC became OPEC Plus in 2016 after joining hands with 10 of the world's major non-OPEC members, including Russia.

OPEC+ Plus represents around 40% of world oil production and its main objective is to regulate the supply of oil to the world market. The leaders are Saudi Arabia and Russia, which produce around 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil each.

OPEC member states' exports make up around 60% of global petroleum trade. In 2021, OPEC estimated that its member countries accounted for more than 80% of the world's proven oil reserves.

Because of the large market share, the OPEC decisions affect oil prices. Its members meet regularly to decide how much oil to sell on global markets.

As a result, when they lower supply when demand falls, oil prices tend to rise. Prices tend to fall when the group decides to supply more oil to the market.

On April 02, 2023 OPEC Plus agreed to deepen crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7% of global demand, until the end of 2023, which helped to push up oil prices by about US$9 a barrel to above US$87 per barrel over the following days, but Brent prices have since lost those gains.

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of OPEC imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for its decision to re-supply the Israeli military, as well as other countries that supported Israel. The embargo banned petroleum exports to those nations and introduced cuts in oil production.

The oil embargo pressured an already strained US economy which had grown dependent on imported oil. Oil prices jumped, causing high fuel costs for consumers and fuel shortages in the United States. The embargo also brought the United States and other countries to the brink of a global recession.

In 2020, during COVID-19 lockdowns around the world, crude oil prices slumped. After that development, OPEC Plus slashed oil production by 10 million barrels a day, which is equivalent to around 10% of global production, to try to bolster prices.

The current members of OPEC are: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Venezuela.

Non-OPEC countries in the global alliance of OPEC Plus are represented by Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, South Sudan and Sudan.

United States and South Korea in talks to release frozen Iranian assets

Officials from the United States and South Korea are holding talks over unfreezing Iranian funds held in South Korean banks, according to a South Korean daily.

The talks are focused on releasing the US$7 billion Iranian funds that have long been blocked in South Korean banks due to US sanctions on Iran. The funds are oil revenues dating back to the period prior to the re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran in May 2018.

Citing diplomatic and government sources, The Korea Economic Daily said, “Korean and US government officials are involved in working-level discussions under Washington’s leadership to unfreeze the Iranian funds.”

The newspaper said the funds, if released, would only be used for public and humanitarian purposes such as UN dues and COVID-19 vaccines.

“If all goes to plan, we expect our strained relationship with Iran to improve significantly,” said a Seoul government official.

If talks turn out to be successful, the frozen money will be allowed to be transferred to Iranian bank branches in neighboring Middle Eastern countries, not directly to Iran, to monitor the flow and use of the funds, sources said.

The Korean newspaper also pointed to media speculation over the concessions that Iran is expected to make in exchange for getting its money unfrozen. It said that media reports alleged that Iran would release US prisoners and limit uranium enrichment levels to 60% in return. These speculations have so far not been confirmed by officials.

The frozen Iranian funds have been the biggest obstacle to improvement in Tehran-Seoul relations. They have also been a source of tensions between the two countries.

South Korea seems to be willing to improve its relations with Iran by releasing its funds. “Analysts said if the US$7 billion Iranian funds are released, it would significantly improve Seoul’s relations with Tehran, an energy and military power in the Middle East,” the Korean newspaper wrote.

“There is nothing South Korea can gain from becoming an enemy of Iran,” said Sung Il-kwang, a Korea University professor. “Korea will benefit from gaining access to Iran’s huge market.”