Iran’s Envoy In Yerevan Defends Armenia's Territorial Integrity

Camron made the call during his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, as Houthis continued firing missiles at commercial vessels.

In the meeting, Wang stressed the importance of “the convergence of interests” between London and Beijing, adding that the two sides can play significant roles to promote security and peace.

Yemeni Houthis launched their campaign to target shipping lanes in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in early November urged Muslims to initiate a blockade of Israel. Houthis claim they only target Israeli and Israel-bound ships, but the attacks have proven to be more random.

Though Iran has avoided any direct military involvement in the Israel-Hamas conflict, the regime has used its proxy groups such as Houthis and Hezbollah to attack Israeli and American targets in the region.

The US State Department announced on Friday that a missile hit an India-bound oil tanker in the Red Sea.

The vessel identified as M/T Pollux was struck with a missile launched from the Yemeni territories, the State Department added. The Panamanian-flagged tanker was carrying crude oil, the report added.

"This is yet another example of the lawless attacks on international shipping, which continue after numerous joint and international statements calling the Houthis to cease," remarked a State Department spokesperson.

Yemeni Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, saying the oil tanker was owned by Britain.

“The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a targeting operation against a British oil ship (Pollux) in the Red Sea with a large number of appropriate naval missiles, and the strikes were accurate and direct,” read a statement issued by the Houthis’ military spokesperson Yahya Sarea.

Meanwhile, AFP reported that the EU next week will officially announce the launch of the bloc’s naval mission in the Red Sea as part of the international campaign to stop the destabilizing actions of Iran-backed Houthis.

Germany, Belgium, France and Italy have agreed to contribute vessels to the mission, which is termed Aspides, meaning shield in Greek. At least four vessels are to take part in Aspides, an EU official said.

“The overall commander of the mission will be Greek, while the head officer in operation control at sea will be Italian,” the EU official went on to say.

The United States also launched in December a multinational naval coalition in the Red Sea to protect trade vessels. According to Reuters, 20 countries, including Britain, Norway, Seychelles, France, the Netherlands, Australia and Italy, have joined the coalition.

Amid mounting international pressures on Iran’s proxy group, the US Department of Treasury announced that Washington’s sanctions against Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) have been officially enforced on Friday.

Last month, the Biden administration listed Houthis as Specially Designated Global Terrorist in response to the group’s rising threats in the region. Washington, however, has not decided yet to include Houthis in the list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).

The Biden administration delisted the Houthis in 2021 as both a foreign terrorist organization and as a specially designated global terrorist entity.

On January 10, the UN Security Council passed a resolution, calling on Houthis to stop attacks on shipping immediately.

Two days after the resolution was approved, the US and UK targeted dozens of Houthis’ sites in Yemen. The two countries have launched several other rounds of preemptive offensives against the group’s targets in Yemen in an attempt to decrease its military capabilities.

Rashno, who gained attention after a viral video captured her in a scuffle with a government hijab enforcer in 2022, had her sentence of three years and 11 months in Evin prison enforced on Thursday.

“Writers and artists such as Rashno play a pivotal role, not only by calling out injustices and amplifying the public’s desire for change but also by inspiring everyone to dream of a brighter future grounded in human rights and where women can freely make choices about what they wear,” stated Liesl Gerntholtz, PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center director at PEN America.

Rashno’s journey through the Iranian legal system has been marked by controversy. Concerns were raised over a televised confession where Rashno appeared with bruises on her face, sparking allegations of coercion. Despite being released on bail in June 2023, Rashno faced a series of charges, including “propaganda” and “encouraging promiscuity,” culminating in her recent sentencing.

Her case is emblematic of the broader struggle against forced hijab in Iran, a movement catalyzed by the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. The opposition to mandatory hijab has become a symbol of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Iran’s crackdown on writers is highlighted by PEN America’s Freedom To Write Index, which reported at least 57 Iranian writers arrested in 2022, making Iran the second-highest jailer of writers globally, following China. Furthermore, Iran leads in the incarceration of female writers.

PEN America said it continues to advocate for Rashno’s release and urges the Iranian government to respect freedom of expression and human rights.

Lotfollah Dejakam, the Friday prayers Imam of Shiraz has said that the 35 men have realized that they are too old for the Assembly's membership and that they have decided to leave the task to younger clerics.

The AoE has always been a predominantly elder's assembly and photos from the previous and current rounds of the assembly show elderly clerics dozing off during meetings.

Although in the Iranian press the Majles (parliament) elections is in the spotlight, the Assembly of experts election which will be held on the same date, March 1, is the one which is more important as its results affect the fate of succession and post-Khamenei Iran.

On Wednesday, Mohammad Emami Kashani, a 92-year-old senior cleric of the Assembly was said to have been disqualified from running. But reports on Thursday said that Emami Kashani has withdrawn his candidacy because of his medical conditions.

Earlier, Ahmad Jannati, the oldest member of the Assembly at 97 declared his withdrawal from the competition although he still retains his extremely significant post as the Secretary of election watchdog Guardian Council.

Mostafa Faghihi, the editor of centrist Entekhab news website had said that Jannati and others' withdrawal from the Assembly of Experts elections is part of a possible project to pave the way for President Ebrahim Raisi's chairmanship at the new round of the Assembly.

Other observers have also said the same about the withdrawal of dozens of senior clerics from the competition, stating that they would not want to have a relatively younger and definitely less educated cleric as their superior at the Assembly.

Still others believe the dynamics is being furthered by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who wants to be in control of the assembly's leadership. He is also said to prefer to have Raisi as the Chairman of the Assembly so that Raisi could become the next supreme leader or play a key part in naming Khamenei's son, Mojtaba as the successor.

According to a report published by Khabar Online website, hardline clerics in Tehran and Qom have reached an agreement about the list of 11 candidates for Tehran. The clerics in Qom and Tehran gave a list of 16 candidates each, but 5 of the candidates in each list are not on the other group's list. Still this partial agreement among conservatives is interesting as they have not been able to react to a consensus over their lists in the previous three rounds of the Assembly election.

All the 11 candidates shared by Tehran and Qom clerics are middle-aged mullahs previously trusted by Khamenei. They include former Intelligence Minister Ghorban Ali Dorri Najafabadi, Seminary Dean Alireza E'rafi, and Islamic Propaganda Office Chairman Mahmoud Mohammadi Araghi.

The five candidates exclusive to Tehran clerics' list are led by former hardliner prosecutor Ali Razini, but all the five on the Qom clerics' list are less known and relatively younger clerics.

Critics in Iran say that now, even without an election on March 1, the ideal scene is set for Khamenei's favorite clerics to enter the next Assembly of Experts under Raisi’s chairmanship without any challenge when the time comes later this summer.

In the meantime, to save Raisi the embarrassment of being the only candidate in South Khorasan for the region's only seat at the Assembly, the Guardian Council endorsed a hitherto unknown cleric out of the blue to be the second candidate from the remote constituency. However, everyone in Iran knows how the rest of the process works to ensure that Raisi wins the competition if there is a competition at all. This process is what Iranian electioneers call engineering; something in between election rigging and grafting.

"This is yet another example of the lawless attacks on international shipping, which continue after numerous joint and international statements calling the Houthis to cease," a state department spokesperson said.

Earlier the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency and British maritime security firm Ambrey said a Panama-flagged tanker had reportedly been hit 72 nautical miles (133 km) northwest of the port of Mokha, off Yemen.

"The vessel experienced an explosion in the vicinity of the vessel and reportedly sustained minor damage. The crew was reported safe and unharmed," Ambrey said.

Another vessel three nautical miles to the northeast of the tanker was observed altering course to port, away from the tanker, Ambrey added.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis have said they will press on with attacks on Red Sea shipping in solidarity with the Palestinians, as long as Israel continues to commit "crimes" against them.

"Our operations have a big impact on the enemy which constitute a great success and a real triumph," Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi said in a televised speech on Thursday.

The attacks on ships have disrupted global commerce, stoked fears of inflation and deepened concern the Israel-Hamas war could spread.

(Reuters Report)

Plunging electricity deliveries in warm months and gas in the cold season to major industrial sectors, including petrochemicals, cement, and steel, has widened their idle capacity.

The energy value (heat of combustion) of one cubic meter of natural gas is approximately equal to one liter of mazut or diesel. Despite the Iranian government gaining $4.5 billion from gas exports during the last fiscal year, it had to consume an additional 18 billion liters of diesel and mazut domestically, worth over $9 billion.

Amin Ebrahimi, the vice president of the Iran Steel Manufacturers Association, told the ILNA news website in Tehran that the government has cut gas deliveries to this sector by 30 to 50 percent since November 2023. According to him, the country’s nominal iron and steel production capacity is 46 million metric tons per year (mt/yr), but the actual production volume hardly reaches 33 mt/y due to the energy deficit.

Steel exports rank second after petrochemicals in terms of the country’s non-oil export revenues. According to the Iran Steel Manufacturers Association’s statistics, the country’s steel production declined last summer due to electricity deficits and plunged in January 2024 due to severe gas deficits.

The country’s steel products export value also declined by 5.5 percent to $6.2 billion in the first ten months of the current fiscal year, which started on March 22, 2023. Ebrahimi did not elaborate on how much gas is being delivered to the Iranian steel sector now, but according to a report prepared by the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) and seen by Iran International, the average gas deliveries to this sector were 39 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) last spring.

According to Iran Steel Manufacturers Association’s statistics, the country’s steel production has declined in last summer due to electricity deficit and plunged in January 2024 due to severe gas deficit.

Industrial sector’s gas demand

According to another report prepared by National Petrochemical Company, seen by Iran International, the country produced only 69.7 million tons of petrochemicals during last fiscal year, while this sector’s nominal capacity is 91.5 million tons. In other words, about 25 percent of the capacity of petrochemical plants was idle, mostly due to gas shortages.

In a related context, Mehdi Mahdavi Abhari, the Secretary-General of the Petrochemical Employers Association, announced recently that Iran lost $800 million in petrochemical exports due to gas supply shortages last year. The National Gas Company’s report shows about 70 mcm/d of gas was delivered to petrochemicals last spring, but the current volume is unclear.

However, Saeed Aghli, the head of dispatching operations at the NIGC, said last week that the major industrial sectors (petrochemicals, steel, and cement) are supplied with 78 mcm/d of gas. The NIGC’s report, seen by Iran International, indicates that the figure was 150 mcm/d last spring. In simple terms, NIGC has declined gas deliveries to the major industrial sectors by 48% to compensate for gas deficits in housing, public, business, small industries, and agriculture sectors, where the demand rose from 225 mcm/d in spring to 646 mcm/d last week.

Petrochemicals share 7.5% of Iran’s GDP and 25% of its non-oil exports. Another sector severely affected by gas shortages is electricity generation, where 256 mcm/d of gas was utilized last spring, but the volume plunged to 120 mcm/d last week. Iran uses a huge amount of very dirty mazut fuel as well as diesel to compensate for gas shortages in power plants and industrial sectors during winters. Oil ministry statistics show the country’s daily mazut and diesel consumption increased by 115% and 45% to 43,000 metric tons and 110,000 metric tons, respectively, during the last four years due to increasing gas deficits. Iran faces a 250-300 mcm/d gas shortage in winters, but Arash Najafi, the chairman of the Energy Commission of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, said on February 13 that the deficit volume is expected to double in the coming years.

Petrochemicals account for 7.5% of Iran’s GDP and 25% of its non-oil exports.

Gas export

Another sector severely affected by gas shortages is electricity generation, where 256 mcm/d of gas was utilized last spring, but the volume plunged to 120 mcm/d last week. Iran resorts to a significant amount of very dirty mazut fuel as well as diesel to compensate for gas shortages in power plants and industrial sectors during winters. Oil ministry statistics indicate that the country’s daily mazut and diesel consumption increased by 115 percent and 45 percent to 43,000 metric tons and 110,000 metric tons, respectively, during the last four years due to increasing gas deficits. Iran faces a 250-300 mcm/d gas shortage in winters, but Arash Najafi, the chairman of the Energy Commission of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, stated on February 13 that the deficit volume is expected to double in the coming years.