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Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry

ENLARGE Fighters from a coalition of Islamist forces stand on a huge portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last month. Photo: zein al-rifai/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images BEIRUT—Like Israel and Saudi Arabia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has his own reasons to be worried about Iran’s framework nuclear agreement with the U.S. and other world powers. On the face of it, the prospect of a final accord that would lift some international sanctions against Iran is good news for Mr. Assad and his regime, which depend on billions of dollars in support from Tehran. Add to that the direct and substantial military support Mr. Assad receives from Iran’s most powerful proxy force in the region, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. But prospects look dimmer for Mr. Assad if a nuclear agreement opens the door to a broader rapprochement with Iran over its role in Syria and what the Obama administration views as […]

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Central Banks at Zero Failing to Turbocharge Effect of Cheap Oil

Central bankers unable to cut interest rates are failing to turbocharge the effect of declining oil prices. Economists at Oxford Economics Ltd., a U.K.-based research group, say policy makers may be damping hopes that last year’s near-halving of crude prices would spark worldwide demand. “With rates this low, even good news has a sting in the tail,” John Bulford and Gabriel Sterne, economists at Oxford, said in a report to clients last week. “The expansionary impact of the oil-price shock is dampened to some extent because of the limited capacity of central banks to loosen monetary policy.” Oxford’s economic modelling shows the lower crude prices would historically be enough for 26 of the 29 major central banks it monitors to have cut rates by the end of this year. Instead, just half have done so, including the Bank of Canada, which reduced its key rate to 0.75 percent in […]

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KRG expects imminent $439 million budget payment

Breaking developments and ground-truth updates from all of Iraq’s provinces. For even more in-depth insight into Iraq, IOR’s Custom Research Services can help. An oil tanker docks at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey. (STAFF/Iraq Oil Report/Metrography) Recommend Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is expecting to receive its third monthly budget payment of the year from Iraq’s federal government on Thursday.The expected transfer of $439 million represents the largest payment made under a cooperative oil export and revenue sharing agreement between the KRG and Baghdad, embedded in the 2015 budget law.The money had been expected earlier this week, but KRG Deputy Finance Minister Fazil Nabi said the money will now be delivered Thursday."T…

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Riyadh reasserts oil market influence

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi says oil production from the OPEC leader is steady in a fluid energy market.(UPI Photo/Michael Kleinfeld) NEW YORK, April 8 (UPI) — Production commitments from Saudi Arabia, coupled with a low price prediction from the United States, dealt a blow to crude oil prices Wednesday. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said at an economic conference in Riyadh late Tuesday he was optimistic oil markets would recover, adding production from the de facto leader of the Organization of Petroleum Countries was steady . "Oil production in the kingdom is stable and the kingdom’s production per day in March amounted to 10.3 million barrels of oil," he said. An OPEC decision in November to keep production steady increased the downward pressure on oil markets favoring the supply side because of increased output from the United States. U.S. oil production is around 9.3 million bpd. Brent crude […]

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Iran’s oil minister heads to China

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh carries post-nuclear agreement message to energy-hungry China. File Photo by Maryam Rahmanian/UPI. BEIJING, April 8 (UPI) — Iran’s oil minister arrived Wednesday in China to discuss oil sales after backing to become a member of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was joined by trade and industry officials in his first state visit to China since taking office in 2013. His visit comes one week after Tehran and international powers brokered a framework nuclear agreement that could bring sanctions relief to Iran. Iran supplies China with about 12 percent of its annual oil needs. The National Iranian Oil Co. said more oil could head to the Chinese market as sanctions pressure ease. Word of Zangeneh’s visit influenced crude oil markets already pressured by the glut of oil from U.S. shale deposits. Iran’s oil exports are limited about half of […]

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Iranian establishment faces risks if nuclear deal fails

ANKARA (Reuters) – Failure to finalize a framework agreement between Iran and the six major powers aimed at curbing the country’s sensitive nuclear work could profoundly destabilize the Islamic Republic, analysts and politicians say. Iranians’ hopes of ending their international isolation have risen so high since the accord that failure to finalize it would generate levels of dismay that could hurt the authorities, even if the West was portrayed as the guilty party, analysts say. “Finally it is over. The isolation is over. The economic hardship is over. (President Hassan) Rouhani kept his promises,” said university student Mina Derakhshande, who was among a cheering crowd on Friday. “Failure of the talks will be end of the world for us Iranians. I cannot tolerate it.” Managing popular expectations will be more difficult in Iran now, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. […]

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China to Build Pipeline From Iran to Pakistan

ENLARGE Iranian workers weld two pipes together in 2013, at the start of construction on a pipeline to transfer natural gas from Iran to Pakistan in Chabahar, Iran. Photo: Vahid Salemi/ASSOCIATED PRESS ISLAMABAD—China will build a pipeline to bring natural gas from Iran to Pakistan to help address Pakistan’s acute energy shortage, under a deal to be signed during the Chinese president’s visit to Islamabad this month, Pakistani officials said. The arrival of President Xi Jinping is expected to showcase China’s commitment to infrastructure development in ally Pakistan, at a time when few other countries are willing to make major investments in cash-strapped, terrorism-plagued, Pakistan. The pipeline would amount to an early benefit for both Pakistan and Iran from the framework agreement reached earlier this month between Tehran and the U.S. and other world powers to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. had previously threatened Pakistan with […]

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Iranian Companies Try to Buy Swiss Refinery Ahead of Sanctions Lifting

ENLARGE The Tamoil Suisse refinery in Collombey, Switzerland, shown here in a file photo, closed in March. Iranian interests are looking to buy the property. Photo: Reuters Iranian companies are trying to buy a Swiss petroleum refinery, according to people familiar with the deal, as Tehran seeks outlets for oil that may return if western sanctions are lifted later this year. Petro Farhang, the oil-investment subsidiary of Iran’s teacher pension fund, and Ghadir Investment, a conglomerate with petrochemical businesses which is controlled by Iranian pension funds, have registered a formal expression of interest to buy a refinery in Collombey, Switzerland, controlled by Libyan firm Tamoil Suisse, according to people familiar with the move. Stephane Trachsler, general secretary of Tamoil Suisse, said the company had rejected all potential bidders so far. He declined to confirm the approach by the Iranian companies but he said one potential bidder had been refused […]

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C.I.A. Director Says Iran’s Economic Peril Helped Drive Nuclear Deal

Photo John O. Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard on Tuesday. Credit Gretchen Ertl/Reuters CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency has provided the first public glimpse of American intelligence assessments about why Iran ’s leadership agreed to the tentative nuclear accord last week, saying that Iran’s president persuaded its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , that their country’s economy was “destined to go down” unless he reached an understanding with the West. The C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan , speaking Tuesday night at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, suggested that a key to the deal was the election of President Hassan Rouhani, who had hardly been the supreme leader’s first choice. It took more than two years, he suggested, for the new president, a former nuclear negotiator himself, to persuade the far […]

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Iran will only sign nuclear deal if sanctions lifted ‘same day’: Rouhani

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran will only sign a final nuclear accord with six world powers if all sanctions imposed over its disputed atomic work are lifted on the same day, President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech on Thursday. Iran and the powers reached a tentative agreement last week in the Swiss city of Lausanne aimed at restricting Tehran’s nuclear program in return for removing the economic penalties. All sides are working toward a June 30 deadline for a final deal on the nuclear work, which Western powers fear is aimed at developing an atomic bomb but Tehran says is purely peaceful. "We will not sign any deal unless all sanctions are lifted on the same day … We want a win-win deal for all parties involved in the nuclear talks," Rouhani said. Since the preliminary agreement was reached, Iran and the United States seem to have different […]

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