Following the outbreak of a tanker crisis between the UK and Iran, the U.S. has decided to take on the role of the main mediator in the conflict and has made an attempt to knock together an international coalition for guarding the Hormuz Strait. CONTEXT Tensions in the Hormuz Strait are running practically unabated already for two months. The tense ...
President Donald Trump’s Administration is getting ready to deploy hundreds of servicemen to Saudi Arabia as tensions with Iran are mounting, CNN said in a report quoting a well-informed official at the Pentagon. He revealed that some 500 soldiers would be sent to Prince Sultan airbase to the south of Riyadh. Sources told CNN a small number of U.S. military ...
WAS IRAN RETALIATING AGAINST THE UK FOR SEIZING ITS TANKER? Even though Mr. Ali Rabei, the newly appointed speaker of the Iranian Government, and Mr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic, officially rejected the claims that Iranian seizure of the British Tanker in the Persian Gulf was a response to the UK’s seizure of a Russian ...
On May 8, 2018, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced his decision to end the US’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and begin reinstating nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. These extreme measures including the so-called “maximum pressure” policy and attempting to bring Iranian oil exports to “zero” have inflicted excruciating pain on the Islamic Republic. Tehran faces ...
Let’s delve into the heart of the matter: the blacklisting the IRGC, sanctioning the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, sanctioning Dr. Zariff, the Iranian Foreign Minster, sanctioning General Suleimani, the Commander of the Quds Force wing of the IRGC, et al. Naturally, it was not a surprise to any of us Middle East senior analysts that Iran’s IRGC would eventually ...
The principle governing the world oil market is, simply put, supply and demand. When there is a balance between supply and demand in the oil market, prices remain stable. Based on assessments by geopolitical theorists, an open conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, and even the threat of a possible conflict, can have dangerous consequences for energy security, and, consequently, ...
The conflict between the UK and Iran around the oil tanker Grace 1 runs the risk of growing over into a war of tankers. CNN said on July 11 quoting a source at the U.S. Department of Defense that five Iranian naval vessels had approached the British Heritage tanker during the latter ship’s transition from the Persian Gulf to the ...
The recent Washington’s designation of Iran’s elite, 125,000-member IRGC (Islamic Revolution Guard Corps) as an FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) was overlooked in the Western media as a typical story with the short attention span of the everyday news cycle. I am not an alarmist in my work, but it is now completely ostensible, perhaps more than ever before, that the ...