Greek Court Blocks US Seizure Of Iranian Oil Cargo

The newspaper revealed on Wednesday that the airliner signed a contract through an intermediary company to buy three Airbus A319s at $44.3 million dollars in 2019, but when their documents were registered by banks their value was estimated to be $25.5 million. 

Airbus A319 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin-engine jet airliners manufactured by Airbus, and its list price for a brand-new model can reach up to $100 million. Since the Islamic Republic is not allowed to buy new airplanes due to US sanctions, it has to buy used ones via brokers or intermediaries, which makes the pricing process an issue vulnerable to corruption by middlemen. 

According to Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, more than 50 percent of Iran’s passenger planes are idle due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

The United States sanctions, which banned the sale of aircraft and parts to Iran in 1995, have practically made it impossible for most manufacturers to sell parts to Iran.

When the 2015 nuclear agreement went into effect, sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft were lifted and Iran began talks to buy aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. A few airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

In a long report that appeared on Tuesday on the official government news website IRNA and the official newspaper Iran Daily, President Ebrahim Raisi’s government tried to rebuttal those who say oil exports have decreased in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Global industry sources reported in May that Russia has started taking market share from Iran, especially in China, by offering more discounts. Reuters reported on May 19 that “Iran's crude exports to China have fallen sharply since the start of the Ukraine war as Beijing favored heavily discounted Russian barrels, leaving almost 40 million barrels of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea in Asia and seeking buyers.”

The reports published in the government media indicate that the Raisi administration wants to dispel any sign of weakness in oil exports that it takes credit for. While it has little to show after 10 months in office, the government takes credit for increasing illicit oil exports despite United States’ sanction.

Iran’s currency has slipped to all-time lows against major currencies since March when nuclear talks with the West came to an abrupt pause and the prospect for a nuclear agreement that could lift sanctions is dimming by the day.

The government lifted food import subsidies in early May that led to a steep rise in prices triggering protests by a population impoverished after four years of high inflation.

The government’s denial of a loss in oil exports followed a two-track approach. First, the oil ministry was quoted as saying that demand and exports vary according to market conditions and it is trying to do its best to serve the nation’s interests.

“Supply and demand ratios in the global oil market are shaped by the policies of exporting and importing countries, the economic growth rate and other factors,” the ministry was quoted as saying by IRNA. It added that even if a supplier is eliminated from one market, the ratio of global supply and demand is not affected necessarily. Instead “the geography” of the market might change and Iran can try to sell its oil in new markets.

While the government mouthpiece, IRNA, tried to dispel the notion that Iran’s exports have fallen, the quotes from the oil ministry were vague and did not deny the news.

The government’s second tract was using its official newspaper, Iran Daily, to claim that oil exports have surpassed one million barrels per day, while international industry sources put the figure at around 700,000-800,000 barrels per day at best.

In its May report, Reuters cited shippers’ data that said about 40 million barrels of Iranian oil remained unsold on tankers, with 20 tankers “at anchor near Singapore as of mid-May.” The report also said that that Iranian exports to China dropped between 200,000 to 250,000 barrels per day, replaced by Russian oil after sanctions by US and other countries.

But IRNA insisted that from mid-March to mid-May, Iran was exporting around one million barrels, without citing the discounted price. If Iran charges $80 a barrel with a heavy discount, this could still generate around $2.5 billion a month. IRNA said that oil and petrochemical exports together totaled an average of $3.75 billion a month in this period, or $45 billion annually.

The Terrorist Financing Targeting Center of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Department of the Treasury on Monday targeted a broad range of financiers of terrorism from a variety of regional terrorist designated organizations, including two groups affiliated the IRGC, whose “goal is to pave the way for Iran to exert greater influence in Bahrain and beyond.”

“The targets included three individuals associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods (Quds) Force, four ISIS-associated individuals and one company, six Boko Haram financiers, and terrorist groups Saraya al-Ashtar and Saraya al-Mukhtar,” read the treasury’s statement.

According to the treasury, Ali Qasir, Meghdad Amini, and Morteza Hashemi are part of two networks directed by and providing financial support to the Quds force and its Lebanese proxy group Hezbollah. The complex networks of intermediaries allow the Quds Force to obfuscate its involvement in selling Iranian oil.

Amini and Qasir are financial facilitators who direct a network of nearly 20 individuals and front companies, located in multiple countries, that has facilitated the movement and sale of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold, electronics, and foreign currency. Hashemi controls multiple companies based out of Hong Kong and mainland China and has used his access to the international financial system to broker contracts aimed at laundering vast sums of money.

With oil prices up 50 percent in 2022 to almost $120 a barrel, Bloomberg reported a claim from Vitol Group, the world’s biggest independent crude trader, that the US might want to see more Iranian oil flow given mid-term elections looming in November.

Washington has since 2018, with its ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, threatened punitive action against any third party buying Iranian crude or dealing with Tehran’s financial sector. While this slashed Iran’s exports from 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 to 400,000 bpd in 2020 with many buyers wary of being punished by the US, Iran is now selling around 800,000 bpd, mainly to China, and has developed means of hiding the trade from prying eyes.

Opec+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed last week to accelerate output increases and President Joe Biden’s scheduled visit to Riyadh, although postponed until July, may signal an improvement in strained Saudi-US relations even if Riyadh maintains its good relations with Moscow.

But Vitol’s head of Asia Mike Muller told Bloomberg that prospects for the global oil market were confused by constraints on Russian exports and by production weaknesses across Opec. “There are people who think the market’s going to $135-$140 a barrel,” he said. “And there are people who think we’re going below $100 again.”

US gasoline hits $4.80

Analysts and diplomats are sanguine over prospects for renewing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which would require the US ending ‘maximum pressure’ and lead to an additional 500,000-1 million bpd of Iranian oil reaching world markets.

Iran has around 100 million barrels in storage that could be eased onto the market even more quickly should the US turn a “blind eye” and ‘allow’ Iran to sell more oil. While Republicans and many Democrats oppose easing any Iran sanctions, especially ahead of Tehran returning its nuclear program to the limits set by the lapsed JCPOA, gasoline reaching $4.80 a gallon in the US, up from $3.80 in late February, piles political pressure on Biden and the Democratic Party.

Muller told Bloomberg he did not expect the US seizure of an Iranian-flagged vessel off Greece last month, which prompted Iran to detain two Greek tankers in the Persian Gulf, to signal more US tanker seizures.

Lawrence Norman of the Wall Street Journal tweeted that a well-informed source dismissed Vitol’s report that the Biden Administration might ‘allow’ Iran to sell more oil.

Critics of the Biden administration and supporters of ‘maximum pressure’ have accused the US of being lax in not taking more punitive action against buyers of Iranian crude. Nonetheless, Jason Brodsky, of the advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran, dismissed the Bloomberg report as “speculation.”

At a dinner by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee of New Jersey, Menendez stressed the need for a new Iran strategy and an end to year-long negotiations with Iran to restore the JCPOA.

“It is time to tell the Europeans, who[m] we have shown good faith with, that we were willing to enter into what was hopefully a stronger and longer deal, that the Iranians are not there,” Menendez said according to Jewish Insider.

Menendez, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first expressed misgivings about the Biden Administration’s Iran approach in a speech on the Senate floor in early February.

Menendez revealed in his remarks that he has demanded a classified hearing to find out what the administration’s strategy is and said, “in the absence of hearing a plan in a classified setting, then I intend to create… legislation that will ultimately dictate what a plan should be.”

The powerful Senate Democrat demanded that Biden should enforce oil export sanctions currently on the books against Iran. Since Biden’s election Tehran has increased its oil exports to nearly one million barrels a day, mostly in illicit shipments to China.

He also emphasized the need for military deterrence against Iran, “to defend our people and our interests"