A desert oil pipeline that Israel once operated as a secret joint venture with Iran could be a major beneficiary from the Trump-brokered peace deal with the United Arab Emirates. With the UAE formally scrapping the eight-decade Arab boycott of Israel—and other oil-rich Gulf neighbours likely to follow suit—the Jewish state is on the cusp […]
By all outward appearances, Hatam Khatoun Nema was a small-time money changer working from a nondescript office in Järfälla, a workaday Stockholm suburb. In reality, the Swedish-Iranian businessman ran an obscure Hong Kong company, H M E A CO., LIMITED, that laundered hundreds of millions of dollars through a web of shell companies and businesses […]
The recent diplomatic spat between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provides a glimpse of how mixing religious beliefs and historic relations can prove costly for nations that are either incapable of devising a balanced foreign policy or are dependent on global powers, and instead of having a free and dynamic foreign policy prefers to be dictated. Read Here – […]
For the Middle East’s oil exporters, COVID-19 has been a triple whammy. Fuel prices have cratered, compounding the agonies of a global shutdown and a deadly viral outbreak. According to the International Monetary Fund, the crisis is the worst the Middle East has faced in the modern era. But for Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old crown prince and de facto […]
Reports of a massive twenty-five-year investment and security partnership between China and Iran have caused a stir in Washington, suggesting that Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to isolate Tehran has failed. But the United States is not the only country concerned about the prospect of a Sino-Iranian grand alliance. India has various investments in Iran that […]
The global clout of OPEC, never one of the world’s most admired institutions, reached a nadir in April when a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia triggered a price war just as global oil demand was collapsing due to the coronavirus pandemic. Three months later, the cartel has re-emerged as a model of transnational cooperation and […]
After one of the most dramatic stretches in its history, the oil industry is slowly recovering. March and April saw the toxic combination of depressed demand, excessive supply, limited storage capacity, and intense financial speculation that turned prices on one index negative. Although concerns about a second wave of coronavirus infections remain high, demand is […]
One of the secret elements of the deal signed last year is that China will invest US$280 billion in developing Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemicals sectors. This amount will be front-loaded into the first five-year period of the new 25-year deal, and the understanding is that further amounts will be available in each subsequent five year period, […]
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is now 81-years old. While his health remains a closely guarded secret, his past medical history, age, and the deaths in recent years of other senior leaders have led Iranians to start considering what a post-Khamenei Islamic Republic might look like. There are two main contenders to succeed Khamenei: his 51-year-old son, Mojtaba, and Judiciary Chief Ebrahim […]
The era of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, launched with the promise of largesse, is now likely to go down in history as a period of unprecedented belt-tightening. The 34-year-old known as MBS, already set on reducing his kingdom’s dependence on oil, has now found the insurance offered by the precious commodity pulled out […]
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