You can now find Iran in the Gulf at its new home here.
Subscribers to our RSS feed should be automatically re-routed to the new blog’s feed.
We will be transferring the archives to the new site shortly, but for now they can be found here.
Image courtesy of Flickr user The Wandering Angel under a CC license.
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
Iran’s Oil and Energy Information Network has a story (Persian) on two energy deals that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan concluded on his recent visit to Tehran. Under the headline “Conditions for Transfer of Iranian Gas to Europe have been Met,” the piece quotes Ahmadinejad’s Vice President Mohammadreza Rahimi praising “brotherly” relations with Turkey and the signing of trade initiatives that would eventually total $30B.
Rahimi mentions two specific initiatives, one to cooperate towards developing an additional 6,000 MW of power generation capacity in the two countries. Second is an an agreement for Iran to supply gas to Europe via Turkey (presumably through the planned Nabucco pipeline) and also to act as a transhipment route for Turkmen gas en route to Europe.
Using Iranian gas to fill Nabucco has been discussed before, but this marks a step closer towards making it a reality. The deal, and Erdogan’s high profile visit to Tehran, are no doubt ruffling feathers in DC, but there has been little official reaction to the visit so far. This seems like another example of the “’sleeping with your friends’ enemies” argument that Bryan Early advances here. In sum, friends of a sanctioning state are in fact more likely to flout sanctions and trade restrictions because of security afforded by the alliance with the sanctioning state. Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. by virtue of NATO membership means that the U.S. is likely to be less able to compel it to adopt its Iran-isolating agenda.
-WW
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
Last week, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Tabnak website ran a commentary (Persian) on Iran’s recent arrest of five Kuwaiti fishermen (along with one Qatari and an Egyptian) who had strayed into Iranian territorial waters. Press accounts state that the fishermen were taken to Abadan for questioning and shortly released. The reports differ, however, on exactly where the stop took place – and understandable ambiguity given the myriad maritime boundary disputes in the region.
The Tabnak piece goes on to connect this incident to a long-running Iranian dispute with Kuwait over a gas field known to Iranians as Arash and Arabs as al-Durra. The piece (a translated snip follows) gives a good sense of an Iranian nationalist point of view in which the Islamic Republic’s territory throughout the Gulf is under Arab assault. This incident and similar ones, like the 2007 arrest of British sailors in the Gulf, show how the combination of undemarcated borders and the not altogether historically unjustified Iran-under-assault worldview can be dangerous indeed. In the absence of a firm settlement, these disputes look set to heat up in coming years as demand for Gulf oil and gas grows.
- WW
Under the pretext of Iran’s rightful arrest of Kuwaiti citizens who had illegally entered Iranian maritime territory, Kuwait and its state media have recently asserted their ownership over large parts of Iranian territory in the northern Persian Gulf.
This comes at a time when the Kuwaitis, by highlighting part of our ambassador’s interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper, have [falsely] claimed that Iran was prepared to enter negotiations over the three islands [disputed with the UAE]. Unfortunately, Iran has responded to Kuwait’s aggressive claims with an inexplicable silence.
In light of this report, and based on existing agreements and the [1963] IMINOCO maritime boundary, the Iranian continental shelf in the northern Persian Gulf is Iranian property, just like the Arash gas field [marked in this map as Dorra]. The point that Iranian media have overlooked, is that because of Arab propaganda against Iran’s eternal ownership of the three islands, now Iranian gas fields like Arash and Soroush oil field, both located within Iran’s maritime exploration and production limits, are now subject to territorial claims from Arab sheikhdoms like Kuwait!
It is interesting that, by changing the name of the gas field to al-Durra, Kuwait has claimed its ownership over Iranian maritime territory, and it justifies its claim using the fanciful boundary that the anti-Iranian and anti-Persian Gulf British company Shell has drawn for them, with the Arash field lying just inside Kuwaiti territory.
More background on the Arash/ Durra field follows from the EIA:
Another large non-associated offshore natural gas field, Dorra (Durra), is located offshore near Khafji oil field in the Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone. Dorra development has been controversial since the late 1960s, however, because 70 percent is also claimed by Iran (called Arash). In addition, the maritime border between Kuwait and Iran remains un-demarcated. Saudi Arabia reached an agreement with Kuwait in July 2000 to share Dorra output equally, although the Kuwaitis are reportedly trying to purchase the Saudi share. According to Saudi Aramco, the field is estimated to contain non-associated gas reserves of between 35 and 60 Tcf of natural gas, and is under seismic study. The Kuwaiti Ministry of Oil has reported that the goal is to produce initially 600 MMcf/d from Dorra. Kuwait and Iran have intermittently discussed jointly developing the field, although production plans remain undisclosed.
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
Apologies for the lack of posting in recent weeks – was in the middle of relocating to Washington and juggling other projects. We are also in the process of re-launching the blog, so stay tuned for the new URL. Here are a few links as we get back into the swing of things:
-WW
1. Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have launched The Race for Iran, a new blog on Iran’s geopolitics. Also be sure to read their recent monograph on Iran-China relations.
2. Fereidun Fesharaki’s excellent talk at CSIS on world energy markets, with emphasis on Iran and China. A key takeaway is that China’s investments in Iran’s upstream oil and gas production are running at a loss, which underlines the Leveretts’ point that Chinese interest in Iran is more about building a long term strategic relationship than filling immediate energy needs.
3. I came across the following story about cargoes of Indian basmati rice, originally destined for Iran, that are now flooding the Emirati rice market. A timely reminder of how closely the region’s economies are interlinked:
“Boats filled with basmati have been lying idle in Dubai and at Sharjah Cornice. Iran used to be a good market for UAE re-exporters and the fall in demand there will definitely hurt the UAE market.”
He said prices of many premium basmati rice varieties have fallen by 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
An official at Dubai Municipality’s Food Safety Department told Emirates Business: “The Iranian Government’s decision to ban Indian and Pakistani basmati is an erratic decision based on wrong interpretation of a speech by an Indian minister appealing to farmers to stop cultivating basmati in some areas. The Iranian buyers panicked and stopped importing Indian basmati. The rice coming to the UAE is regularly checked at the port of entry for food safety.”
NOTE: This blog has moved. Please visit our new site here.
There is an interesting piece in Foreign Policy, in which Eugene Ghloz takes on conventional wisdom about Iran’s ability to disrupt oil shipping through the Straits of Hormuz. How hard would be for Iran to shut down the straits?
The answer turns out to be: very hard. Iran would have to disable many of the 20 tankers that traverse the strait each day — and then sustain the effort. Iran cannot rely on the psychological effects of a few hits. Historically, after a short panic, commercial shippers adapt rather than give up lucrative trips, even against much more effective blockades than Iran could muster today. Shippers didn’t stop trying during World War I. Nor did the oil trade in the Gulf seize up during the 1980s Tanker War, when both Iraq and Iran targeted oil exports.
Instead, tankers tend to move around dangers. The strait is deep enough that even laden supertankers can pass safely through a 20-mile width of good water, not just the 4-mile-wide official channel. Tankers already take other routes when it is convenient; during a conflict, they would surely scatter, as they did in the 1980s. Although the strait is narrow compared with the open ocean, it is still broad enough to complicate Iran’s effort to identify targets for suicide and missile attacks. The area is too large to cover with a field of modern mines dense enough to disable a substantial number of tankers, especially given Iran’s limited stockpile.
Gholz also questions the ability of anti-ship missiles or small craft warfare to disable craft:
Over five years of the Iran-Iraq War, 150 large oil tankers were hit with antiship cruise missiles, but only about a quarter were disabled.
But surely ship insurers would want higher premiums if silkworm missiles are being lobbed at their tankers. And surely any type of military conflict in Hormuz – even if it does not end up taking out a large number of tankers – would be enough excuse for traders to bid up oil prices. The real question, which Gholz is right to point out, is the question of how long Iran could sustain such a military effort in the face of the inevitable U.S. response. My own sense is that an attack on shipping in Hormuz would produce an immediate and severe spike in oil prices, but one that would subside fairly quickly.
-WW
I’ve just come across a blog called Iraq and Gulf Analysis written by Reidar Visser who maintains the always excellent Historiae.org site on Basra and southern Iraq. As opposed to the longer essays on Historiae, this blog contains short analytical pieces and Visser’s archive of notes on Iraq from the last few years. Here’s a snip from his recent obit of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the late leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI):
Throughout the post-war period, Hakim masterfully managed to balance US and Iranian pressures and was successful in creating the impression in Washington that SCIRI was on course to liberate itself from Iranian overlordship. This involved theatrics such as a name change in May 2007, where SCIRI became ISCI (without the “revolution”) and where the rumour was circulated (but never officially confirmed) that ISCI would henceforth take its orders from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf in Iraq, instead of from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Simultaneously, Hakim, who himself was never an Islamic scholar of repute, managed to create the impression of religious authority among Americans by focusing on his status as the son of a Shiite luminary (the Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim) and as a sayyid (descendant of the Prophet), thereby prompting many international journalists to describe him as a “leading cleric” and one of the most “powerful” politicians of Iraq. It was only gradually since 2008 – and more pronouncedly since the local elections in January 2009 – that the idea of ISCI as a loyal ally of Iran returned to US policy-making circles in earnest.
-WW
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Full Name: Prof. Daneshjo, KamranPosition: Professor
Phone: 98-21-77240540-50 Ex:2906 Fax: 98-21-77240488 Email: kdaneshjo@iust.ac.ir |
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I concluded last blog by giving Kamran Daneshjoo the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Ahmadinejad’s embattled nominee to head Iran’s Higher Education Ministry could, in time, explain the unexplainable inconsistencies in his academic record—the bachelor’s degree from a vaguely-defined but plausibly Anglican university, the advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. from Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology, an institution that simply does not exist.
But instead time has complicated his story and thus simplified any possible explanation: it’s a farce. Daneshjoo’s new resume, listed above, diverges so brazenly from his old one, listed below. Today, according to the details listed on the Iran University of Science and Technology website, Daneshjoo received his doctorate and MSC from the Imperial College of London, one of England’s finest tertiary institutions. Degrees from Imperial are certainly nothing to be ashamed of and not likely to be hidden in favor of a fabricated graduation from the fictitious Manchester Imperial. For the record, Manchester and London are difficult to confuse and are separated by a four-hour drive.
Were Daneshjoo an avid reader of the “Iran in the Gulf” blog, he might have changed his BSc from “Queen Mary” to “Queen Mary, University of London” and not “Queen Mary College.” Queen Mary College, as I’d written in the last post, is a preparatory academy. It’s good if you want to explore some GCSEs or some A-Levels but no good for picking up a BSc.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has stuck up for Daneshjoo and offered a rather involved alibi: Daneshjoo was expelled from a London college for his participation in a rally against Salman Rushdie (the details of which college employs such a heavy-handed disciplinarian were left undefined).
The fact that Daneshjoo, a former election committee chief who willfully repeated June’s questionable election results, is being defended after this backtracking is a very bad sign. In this morning’s NYT, reporter Michael Slackman doesn’t mention Daneshjoo by name but does hit on the very real possibility of an upcoming purge of the universities. Daneshjoo’s appointment could act to facilitate just that. And secondly, what kind of message over the value of credentials and academic honesty does this send to the nearly 3 million students currently in Iran’s universities? Iran is rightfully credited for its long history of knowledge production and strong network of tertiary institutions. So here’s to hoping that come Thursday’s parliamentary vote and the narrowing of Ahmadinejad’s inner circle, a newly-revised resume for Professor Kamran Danshejoo says nothing of Iran’s Higher Education Ministry. -SW
UPDATE: The vote on Daneshjoo, 186 votes for, 75 against, 25 abstentions. Look for this to have a major impact on Iran’s universities and particularly the teaching of social sciences. For a good list of votes on all nominees, this works.
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Full Name: Prof. Daneshjo, Kamran
Position: Professor Phone: 98-21-77240540-50 Ex:2906 Fax: 98-21-77240488 Email: kdaneshjo@iust.ac.ir |
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As Iran’s 290 member parliament continues three days of debate over the composition of the Ahmadinejad cabinet, objections to the president’s picks, mostly on grounds of inexperience, are many. As a measure of lost legitimacy, Ahmadinejad is reportedly facing unprecedented pushback from leading figures of the 220-member conservative bloc. Eleven of his 21 nominations represent new faces and 16 are being questioned.
Ahmadinejad may have to weather a new and particularly embarrassing storm over his nominee to head Iran’s higher education system. The L.A. Times blog has picked up on reports by the reformist website Mowjcamp.com suggesting the credentials of Kamran Daneshjo (alternately spelled Daneshjoo)– currently a professor of mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science Technology– are dubious. In his official biography, Daneshjo holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering from a “College of London,” with apparently no further explanation needed. His website-listed resume, however, sites a MSc and Ph.D. from “Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology.” There is no way to verify if Daneshjo did, in fact, attend Manchester Imperial because Manchester Imperial does not exist.
A BSc from “Queen Mary” could also use some clarification. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that this refers to Queen Mary , University of London. There is also a Queen Mary’s College but it’s a preparatory academy, with most of its students between the ages of 16 and 19. QMC is located more than an hour outside of London and it certainly does not award doctorate degrees in aerospace engineering.
The LA Times incorrectly repeats a claim made by Mowjcamp.com– that Daneshjo’s inventory of academic publications cannot be found online, implying that its entirety is potentially bogus. Daneshjo is indeed a published academic. But for the prospective head of Iran’s nearly 3 million university students, such basic biographical misrepresentation could mean another political hurdle for Ahmadinejad. The case might become an unwelcome replay of the Oxford degree fabrication that forced Ali Kordan, the Minister of Interior, from power last year.
Yet perhaps there is a simple justification for all of this. When the majlis votes on individual nominees this Wednesday, we’ll surely know more. For now the inconsistencies in Daneshjo’s record are enough to raise some eyebrows and prompt some questions. After all, engineers tend to appreciate accuracy. And it’s not unfair to expect the author of “Classical coupled thermo elasticity in laminated composite plates based on third-order shear deformation theory,” to correctly recall the name of his own alma mater. -SW
Building on our recent discussion of the Iran gasoline sanctions debate, I wanted to flag two recent pieces by Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. The first is from Foreign Affairs earlier in the month in which Luft makes two arguments:
This article parallels a longer piece Luft published in the Journal of Energy Security in June, in which he fleshes out the potential implications of Iran developing its gas markets to the east. Luft asserts that Russia is keen to get Iran’s gas exports focused eastward so it can continue to dominate Europe’s energy scene, and warns that Iranian gas pipelines to Pakistan could give Tehran energy leverage over the subcontinent similar to that which Russia exercises over Europe.
While Luft’s contrary view on Iran’s gasoline import dependence is interesting and the second piece does a good job of gaming-out geopolitical possibilities of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline (read it all here), my concern is about the underlying sanctions logic:
Across both articles, Luft implies that thwarting Iran’s Pakistan pipeline scheme will force Tehran to rethink its nuclear ambitions. Yet Iran is hardly out of options when it comes to using its gas: It could re-inject gas into its aging oilfields to boost production, explore export options to Europe, make a dash for LNG technology, or continue to orient towards domestic use. So rather than capitulate on the nuclear program — a key security and energy priority (not to mention point of national pride) — Iran is likely to pursue its gas plan B ( and C, D, and E) first.
-WW
Iran-Gulf News Roundup
