Iran has raised official prices for its light grade oil above average for its Asian buyers for August, although most of its oil is sold by intermediaries with no information on actual prices.
The National Iranian Oil Company set the official selling price (OSP) of its light grade oil at $8.90 above the Oman/Dubai average, up $2.80 from the previous month.
The new prices are announced about $9 higher than the average for countries in Asia – which are reportedly the only buyers of Iranian oil -- but are only $3 higher for Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa, which have not bought any oil from the Islamic Republic for the past three years.
China and Syria are the only official buyers of Iran’s oil, with less than 26,000 barrels of direct purchase per day by China, but data by tanker tracking companies indicate that Iran delivered 600 to 700 thousand barrels, which means over 95 percent of Iran’s oil exports are carried out via intermediaries disguised as Iraqi, Emirati, Indonesian or Malaysian oil.
US third-party sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump are still in force, as Tehran has failed to reach a nuclear agreement with Washington. Higher listed prices could be a move by Iran to show that it is able to export its oil under good terms despite US sanctions.
On July 12, Iran said its oil production in June increased by 31,000 barrels a day, rejecting reports that Russia has taken market share, shipping more oil to China. Latest OPEC monthly report shows that Iran produced 2,574,000 barrels per day in June, slightly higher than in May.
When the United States imposed full oil export sanctions on Iran in May 2019, exports dropped from more than 2 million barrels a day in 2016-2017 to around 250,000.
Iranian media have often perceived Levan Dzhagaryan's (Jagarian) controversial behavior as intervention in Iran's internal affairs or as flat insults although he does not seem to be bothered by the accusations. On social media, however, and recently in Tehran media Iranians have been demanding an answer to the ambassador's outrageous and provocative remarks.
Khabar Online, a moderate conservative news outlet in Tehran asked on Sunday, July 17, "Where are the government and the foreign ministry" after Dzhagariantold Sharq newspaper in Tehran the day before that "We have always been on Iran's side, but the West want to bring their absurd values such as homosexuality and other dirty things to Iran but we object to that!"
Many Iranians on social media reminded the ambassador that Russia is a large producer of pornography in the world.
The ambassador also said in the same interview: "There are things that I don’t want to reveal, but what is clear is that Iran owes us hundreds of millions of euros and doesn’t pay." Some Iranians on social media perceived this as a prelude to plundering Iran's resources as the alleged debt is about decades of Russia's partnership with the Islamic Republic in constructing the Bushehr nuclear power plant that contributes little to Iran’s electricity.
In an earlier remark, Dzhagaryan had said that "hijab and the lack of alcoholic drinks in Iran prevent Russian tourists from coming to Iran." His remarks which contained criticism of the Islamic Republic's underlying values, was harshly criticized by former Iranian lawmaker Ali Motahari.
At the same time, Motahari and many other Iranians on social media criticized the Raisi administration's silence in the face of Dzhagaryan's comments. The ambassador's earlier remarks particularly angered Iranian journalists when he told them not to call Russia's war against Ukraine an "invasion." The journalists charged that the Raisi administration does not object to Dzhagaryan because it does not want to annoy Russia which is Tehran's close ally.
In another development, when President Biden and the first lady congratulated Iranians on Nowruz, Dzhagarayan dismissed Biden's gesture as "hypocrisy" and reminded that Biden has imposed sanctions on Iran.
These and several other remarks and actions by the ambassador have most certainly not been constructive while at a higher level, Iran and Russia do a lot to pretend to be allies against the United States and Europe.
The Islamic Republic has gone out of its way to give Russians the authority to intervene during Iran's negotiations with the West to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Although Putin's visit to Tehran is officially within the frameworks of the Astana Peace Process for Syria, the initiative is long dead and Putin, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran's Khamenei are part of the problem in the Syrian civil war rather than being able to offer solutions.
Putin is most likely visiting Iran to personally convey his messages to Khamenei who never travels abroad and have a meeting with Erdogan to sort out problems about seizing Russian food cargos going through the Bosporus, based on arrangements with NATO.
Meanwhile, Eurasia expert Mahmoud Shouri told reporters in Tehran that Cold War geopolitical demarcations are being revived. He said the meeting in Tehran could be part of the initiatives to forge new alliances. He added in view of the fact that Biden did not gain much during his regional tour, Russia must be thinking of leaving the void Washington has left behind in the region.
What Khamenei can get out of the meeting is pretending that new alliances in the Middle East have not totally isolated him as he can at least host Putin.
At the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Lapid said, “We came and asked to introduce a credible military threat during President Biden’s visit. We want the basis [for world power’s negotiations with Iran] to be a credible military threat. We didn’t necessarily agree on this with the Americans at the present time.”
He said he “made it clear to the president and his team that Israel opposes the nuclear deal and maintains complete freedom to act, diplomatically and operationally, in the face of the Iranian nuclear program.”
Lapid also described Biden’s trip to Israel “a historic visit, with achievements in diplomacy, security and the economy.”
Lapid’s office also issued a photo of him hanging up the so-called Jerusalem Declaration -- signed by Lapid and Biden in which Washington committed to “use all elements of its national power” to ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon -- in the cabinet meeting room in Jerusalem. Lapid said he was hanging the statement “in the place intended for historical declarations.”
Washington pledged further “defense assistance” on top of the $38 billion 10-year Memorandum of Understanding in 2016 under President Barack Obama and the $1-billion assistance after the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian violence centered on Gaza.
The deputy head of the environmental protection committee of the capital’s City Council, Mehdi Babaee, told ILNA on Sunday that ground subsidence in the southwestern districts of Tehran has reached a dangerous level, to about 20 centimeters per year.
"We are developing a plan in Tehran city council, according to which the municipality will be required to use surface water recycling for water consumption in urban areas, including irrigation of green spaces,” he said, noting that the implementation of such a plan can lead to a reduction in the extraction of the capital's underground water resources and reduce the rate of land subsidence in the city.
According to the latest official data by the geological organization of the country, the rate of subsidence in the plains around Tehran was between 17 and 24 centimeters per year.
Tehran is facing a serious problem of rapid ground subsidence due to decreasing ground water levels, imagery consulting firm Intel Lab reported in July 2021. Intel Lab published a series of satellite imagery showing relative levels of sinking ground between January 2020 and April 2021. In some areas the ground had sunk up to 25 centimeters or more than 8 inches.
Depletion of underground water is one of the main causes for ground subsidence that can threaten not only cities but also agricultural lands. Moreover, land subsidence is not limited to cities and their surrounding plains. In many other areas in Iran cracks and huge hollows that resemble meteor craters have appeared in the ground in recent years.
Ali Saberi, a geologist, said last year that one million hectares of land in the country is affected by subsidence, blaming unlimited extraction of ground water as the main cause of the phenomenon.
Alireza Shahidi, the head of Iran’s Geological Organization said in 2021 that land subsidence is a “disaster” and a “silent earthquake” that can lead to political and security crises.
Iran’s natural disaster taskforce says 20 million urban residents face ground subsidence in 29 of 31 provinces, warning about agricultural overuse of water. Ali Beytollahi, the head of the taskforce said Iran has not come up with policies and rules to deal with the disaster, as drought and wasteful irrigation methods are depleting groundwater reserves, adding that unless serious action is taken, the country can soon reach a point of no return.
According to experts, the country has less than ten years to deal with dangerous land subsidence because of over-extraction of ground water.
According to Gholam-Ali Jafarzadeh, the head of the National Cartography Center, 80 percent of the groundwater is withdrawn annually in Iran, adding that over the past decades, some of the aquifer levels dropped by 100 centimeters.
In addition to Inefficient irrigation methods, digging illegal wells is the other cause of subsidence, as out of 50,000 wells pumping underground water resources in the capital, 30,000 are illegal.
Iran has been suffering from drought for more than a decade and this year lack of precipitation is larming. Over the next 40 years, the country's temperature will rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius, which will make matters worse.
As drought persists, more underground water is exploited for irrigation, depleting natural reservoirs formed during thousands of years. This has aggravated ground subsidence, alarming government officials who have circulated confidential memos on the subject.
