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“Such statements are unfounded and unfortunately the UN Secretariat has shown that it is affected by US threats,” Zarif said in the live interview on Instagram with Iranian journalist Farid Modarresi.

The strikes on Saudi Arabia targeted a Saudi oil facility in Afif in May 2019, the international airport at Abha in June and August, and state oil giant Aramco’s processing facilities in Khurais and Abqaiq in September.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Thursday that “cruise missiles and/or parts thereof used in the four attacks are of Iranian origin”.

Zarif said the situation in West Asia is “special and serious”.

“It is wise for the countries of the region to talk about the future instead of being taken by the past,” he said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday the UN allegation it had been leveled under the US and Saudi influence.

The ministry said the UN report had been prepared “with political motivation “and contained “a number of serious flaws, inaccuracies, and discrepancies.”

“Undoubtedly, such reports will not only fail to help [promote] peace and security in the region and implement [UN] Security Council resolutions but also completely destroy the validity and reputation of the United Nations,” the ministry warned.

Trump’s reelection

Zarif also said US President Donald Trump still has a good chance of being reelected due to his strong support base, despite his declining support in recent months.

“The biggest mistake in human sciences is to predict, especially in fluid and grave conditions. But allow me to venture a prediction that Mr. Trump’s reelection chances are still more than 50%,” Zarif said. “Of course his chances have seriously decreased compared to four to five months ago.”

“But Mr. Trump has a 30-35% base that has not moved and, as long as this base does not move, there is still a chance of his reelection,” he added.

Relations between Tehran and Washington have taken a turn for the worse since Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Iran has responded by gradually scaling back its commitments under the agreement.

In a tweet on June 5, Trump called on Iran not to wait for the next administration for what he called “the big deal” with Washington.

“Don’t wait until after US Election to make the Big deal. I’m going to win. You’ll make a better deal now!”

Recent opinion polls have seen Trump lose ground to Democrat Joe Biden.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded that Iran would not base its policies on internal US matters, such as elections.

Zarif said in the interview that Trump himself had likely reached the conclusion that his policies of “maximum pressure” against Iran had failed.

“I don’t think Trump believes anymore in a talk that the Islamic Republic is about to collapse,” Zarif said. “But he keeps repeating his mistakes. It seems that they (US officials) know they have committed errors but don’t know how to correct them.”

Reuters, AFP, and Press TV contributed to this story.

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Following is the statement released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday:

The Islamic Republic of Iran categorically rejects the allegations of the UN Secretariat, which is clearly under political pressure from the US and Saudi regimes and expresses its deep concern over the abuse of the UN Secretariat for political purposes.

The Secretariat, based on an unusual interpretation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, has so far refrained from reporting on numerous violations by the United States and the European States with respect to the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the JCPOA (Annex A to the Resolution), inter alia, the unlawful withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA, which is a grave violation of Resolution 2231 and its subsequent illegal actions towards UN Security Council Resolution 2231 by re-imposition of sanctions.

While the Secretariat has treated with utmost tolerance and leniency towards these violations so far, it is now surprisingly engaged with an issue in which it has no authority to point out highly technical and legal findings, and its so-called technical report is in no way in line with the practical arrangements of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 to perform its functions.

Interestingly, the Secretariat’s report coincides with the US’ move to propose a dangerous draft resolution that paves the way for the extension of arms restrictions on Iran in an illegal way; and yet more surprisingly, the content of this report is used by the US two weeks prior to its official release. The aforementioned fact creates the impression that the report has been prepared under the direction of the United States and to be used in the efforts of that State in the Security Council against Iran.

Leveling accusations against other states using self-created processes and arbitrary procedures is a dangerous heresy, which is not accepted by the international community. Such dictated processes will cause severe damage to the credibility and undermine the integrity of the United Nations. Preparing a report with political motives never changes the facts on the ground, and it is obvious to everyone that the current situation in the region is a direct result of the wrong policies of the United States and the child-murderer regime of Saudi Arabia. How is it that the UN Secretary-General refuses to take into consideration the sale of lethal weapons to Saudi Arabia, the use of which against the defenseless people of Yemen is indisputable, but rather, he is sending his investigation teams to search through Saudi waste materials to provide evidence for US baseless claims?

Undoubtedly, such reports will not only fail to help bring peace and security to the region and implement the UN resolutions but will also completely destroy the credibility and reputation of the United Nations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly recommends that the UN Secretariat not move in the pre-planned US scenario to prevent the lifting of Iran’s arms restrictions and not assist a violating State in this dangerous process by circulating such unlawful reports. The United States itself is the gravest violator of Security Council Resolution 2231, and no one can clear the name of that State from systematic violations of international rules.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Saudi Arabia is quietly trying to mend fences with Iran and other regional rivals as officials in the kingdom have grown more worried about the risks conflict poses to its oil-dependent economy.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the world body’s investigators are “unable to independently corroborate” the US and Saudi claims that Iran had a role behind the kingdom’s Aramco oil facilities going through attack in September.

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According To Iran News,The Saudi government plans to sell 2% of state oil giant Aramco in a domestic listing on December 11, but restrictions on future share sales mean an international IPO is ruled out for at least a year.

The important point is that a single administration, directly under the supervision of the King of Saudi Arabia and headed by the King’s son, will direct and control the process so that all officials who come to work in different years will need to advance in 2030’s strategic direction.

In line with the principles and plans outlined in the 2030 vision plan, Saudi Arabia will be a serious competitor in attracting foreign investment to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, including Iran. According to the Economist, a  2030 program that has greatly increased expectations includes selling a small portion of the Aramco Saudi Company, the world’s largest oil company, creating the world’s largest investment support fund for activities in a wide range of capital markets, creating more employment for women. And focus more on the dynamics of non-oil industries from mining to military hardware. These goals are radical in a country where 90 percent of the government’s oil revenues have been supplied over the years and its budget deficit has reached 13.5 percent of GDP since the oil price cut (2016). The kingdom, as the country that pays the third largest military budget in the world, spends only 2% of the cost of arms purchases inside the country.

The consequences of selling 2% of state oil giant Aramco in a domestic listing, one of the first steps in  process in reaching 2030 strategic program, will be intimidating for policymakers and may intensify internal disputes; nevertheless, stock sales may be the beginning of a wave that is a model for other governments with similar challenges in the region.

Energy analysts believe Aramco will face some difficulties in the Riyadh stock exchange.

Advantages of Aramco in contrast with other oil companies

There are important factors in Aramco’s superiority over other oil giants, some of which are mentioned below:

1. Aramco has a stronger financial resource than big oil companies like Shell -Exxon-BP.

2. Due to its large financial resources, the company is able to invest in upstream oil and gas projects. The company has invested in the refinery project of major energy-consuming countries, such as India and China.

3. The debt-to-equity ratio of the company is lower than that of the oil giants listed in case one.

4- The high ability to produce oil and gas liquids with different grades; Excessive oil reserves and very low production costs (the cost of oil extraction in some oilfields is very cheap; in some oilfields, the price of oil does not exceed ten dollars before reaching a barrel. Aramco Proven Oil Reserves: total 268.5 billion barrels, even bigger than previously known –  Aramco in 2018 had a net refining capacity of 3.1 million barrels per day.)

5-High investment in oil and gas value chains such as refineries and petrochemicals.

Risks

The first risk is the return on your investment. We deal with frozen numbers for this. Aramco has guaranteed that it will give shareholders at least $ 75 billion in annual profits from 2020 to year 2024, and even if the company’s net income does not reach this level, the company will take away the share from the kingdom.

The geopolitical risk is how much the stock price will increase if there is a more serious attack on the Aramco plant again. In this case, there is no guarantee that Aramco shares will not be affected by these accidents.

The risks of global warming and climate change are already gaining more attention and the rules for oil companies will become more difficult every day. This will lead to the devaluation of stocks of large oil companies, which do not invest well in gas and renewable energy.

The risk of changing Saudi Arabian laws: More than 90% of Aramco’s income-generating assets are in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabian laws, the arrest of oil billionaires, changes in laws and tax and loyalty share, and Jamal Khashoggi murder poses a significant risk to Aramco’s shareholders.

Comparing new technologies and renewable oil energy unit prices above shows that the future of investing in oil is very risky.

However, the implementation of this major program depends on oil revenues and the country’s ability to obtain investment from abroad. Saudi Arabia’s oil marketing strategy, on the other hand, continues to expand investments in the refineries of countries with high demand potential, particularly in China. The results of the sale of Aramco shares, one of the first steps in this process, will be intimidating for policymakers and may intensify internal disputes; nevertheless, stock sales may be the beginning of a wave that has been a model for other governments with similar challenges in the region.

De-escalation foreign policy with  active energy diplomacy may help Saudi be successful in achieving the aims of 2030 programs and Aramco go to the stock market to publish and sell shares. Saudi Arabia also needs to prioritize financial transparency because it is very important for foreign investors. The relevant trade law should be more attractive to the investor and did not change it after it was amended.

The prospect document proposes that half of this purchase amount be spent in Saudi Arabia by 2030.Saudi Arabia needs to enter a free trade and investment cycle, and the free participation of tourists and the smooth implementation of international law, such as transparency and secular economic procedures, but most of these cases are rejected by clerics who have resigned from the world for decades.

Dr. Omid Shokri Kalehsar, Washington-based Senior Energy Security and energy policy Analyst, contributor for United World International, and analyst at Gulf State Analytics (GSA).

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The crown prince made the decision of Aramco IPO at a meeting he chaired on Friday and an official announcement is likely as soon as Sunday, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named before an official statement, Bloomberg reported.

The partial privatization will be a deal like few others and the biggest change to Saudi oil industry since the company was nationalized in the 1970s. Aramco, which pumps 10% of the world’s oil from giant fields beneath the kingdom’s barren deserts, is the backbone of the kingdom’s economic and social stability.

First suggested by the prince in 2016, Aramco IPO was delayed several times as international investors balked at the $2 trillion valuation he placed on the company. An earlier plan to kick off the share sale in mid-October was shelved after bankers received lukewarm interest from money managers, and the deal will likely rely heavily on Saudi money.

It is not clear if the prince is willing to accept a lower valuation, but he may need to be satisfied with a figure closer to $1.7 trillion, if he wants the deal to go ahead, people have said.

In a bid to make the stock more attractive, Aramco plans to pay $75 billion in dividends next year. That would give investors a yield of 3.75% if the company achieves its ambition of a $2 trillion valuation. That’s a decent payout in a low-interest-rate world, but it’s a lower dividend yield than at other big oil firms.

Investors who buy into the IPO have been guaranteed that the dividend won’t fall until after 2024, regardless of what happens to oil prices. Instead, Aramco will cut back on payouts to the government if it has to reduce the total dividend to less than $75 billion.

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Before shooting down of the U.S. drone by Iran and setting Aramco oil facilities on fire by Yemeni forces, the U.S. used to beat the drum of war, and these belligerent propagations but void and bluffing ones motivated Saudi Arabia that it might probably be forced somehow to enter a war beside the U.S. in order to get revenge of its defeats which were resulted from expansion of Shiite thought. But these two incidents of shooting down of the U.S. drone and attacks on Aramco oil facilities caused drastic changes in the U.S. and Al-Saud belligerent policies so that it took breath away from both hostile countries against Iran, and they were forced to seek prudence for countering Iran.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

Early evidences indicate that Saudi Arabia’s stand towards Iran has softened. By the way, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have realized that U.S. President Donald Trump’s goals related to Iran do not conform to theirs. The UAE officials met their Iranian counterparts and discussed issues related to the security of shipping in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Hajj and Umrah welcomed resuming umrah hajj for Iranian pilgrims. Saudi Arabia’s efforts for starting negotiations with Iran kicked off with welcoming resumption of umrah hajj for Iranians.

Meanwhile reports from last month meeting in Brookings Institution indicate that U.S. think-tanks have removed the option of war with Iran from the agenda and they have resorted to diplomacy. During the meeting, Robert Einhorn, Richard Nephew and Vann H. Van Diepen delivered speeches on Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities. Einhorn is former U.S. Department’s Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Van Diepen is a former United States civil servant who worked in a variety of positions in the United States Department of State. Nephew also served at the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the State Department and in the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security at the Department of Energy and was part of the U.S. negotiating team with Iran.

Nephew who is known as architect of the U.S. sanctions on Iran in the Brookings Institution meeting emphasized some topics that one could see no violence in them.

The most important issue which was emphasized by the participants in the meeting was that they believed multiple approaches are necessary in the negotiations, adding that they suggested the U.S. to return to the P5+1 mechanism because its success had been proved before. They added that of course they were well aware that the U.S. allies (Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel) in the region feel they were ignored during the P5+1 talks. They recommended that during the next talks there should be constructive talks and consultation with those allies.

In some part of their report, the think-tanks state,” Above all, our solution policy is diplomacy. We believe that genuine diplomacy must be center of the U.S. policies. We believe that our recommendations can be now operationalized although we think that Donald Trump’s government is not prepared to pay attention to these recommendations. We also believe that it is impossible these recommendations and suggestions for the foreign policies to be taken into consideration at least by 2021.”

They also reiterated, “Inclusion of  our recommendations in the future agreement requires a general evaluation of  Iran’s  nuclear obligations like revising them at the time of nuclear escape, and how sanctions being reduced, today we need talks in this regard. We hope our report to become base for the ideas which define the dimensions of talks with Iran in the future.”

This incentive, that such a famous and reliable think-tank in the U.S. gives, means that Iran’s applied policies, along with timely serious and brave reactions, have made the U.S. change its policies.

Trump because of the upcoming presidential election is unable to skirt Zionist lobbying like President Obama did but it does not mean that he would not accept Brookings’ policies.

That political axis regarding to the consequences of 40-year hostility does not have enough efficiency to adjust the condition is itself important and Americans after the presidential election would replace political axis with economic one on their agenda.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian

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IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

Saudi Arabia’s Aramco Refinery is in Abquaiq region and it is huge oil-processing facilities, located in the desert 60 km southwest of the Dhahran-Dammam-Khobar metropolitan area and it is considered as the biggest crude oil refinery in the world.

In this refinery, sour crude oil is converted into sweet oil crude and then it is exported to European states in the Mediterranean Sea by passing the west-to east route in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea by  rounding the Arabian Peninsula.

According to the statistics, oil refining capacity of Aramco is around 7m barrels per day. Kharis Oil Refinery was one of the other targets of Yemen’s Houthis which is located 160 kilometers from Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. With available information that oil in these two refineries are not refined and it is not exported to the international markets, we can say up to one-thirds of oil which is exported from the Persian Gulf has been disrupted seriously and until further notice, return to this level of exports is still unclear.

So regarding this shortage of oil, a question is raised why the oil price did not rise and it seems smelly and disputable. The first assumption is that the U.S. had predicted such an attack. In this case, one can say that all those cruise missiles and drones had been fired or dispatched by the U.S. itself in order to destroy Aramco because it had been earlier reported that Aramco Company was to be listed in New York Stock Market by 2020 and according to the reports, the estimates of company’s total value were around $400b and if Saudi Arabia decided to sell only 25 percent of the shares of the company, almost $100b from the liquidity could fly from the U.S. market. And it could mean U.S. President Donald Trump’s hanging. So the first assumption is that the U.S. had activated its strategic reservoirs to curb the shocks related to the attacks and then arranged the attacks at Aramco to destroy it.

The second assumption is that why the U.S. has accused Iran of the attack since the very first minutes. It could be pre-planned attack and plot, and according to the plan, the U.S. was to accuse Iran of the attacks and consequently, they could claim that Iran had directly helped Yemeni forces, or Yemenis would take the responsibilities of the attacks in order to save Iran from charges, and Iran also would, in return, say Yemenis have done a masterpiece, and U.S. acts and decisions could be overshadowed or ignored by those claims.

According to reports, weeks after the attack, some parts of the refinery are still out of work and Al-Saud is unable to repair it.

Aramco, the Victim of White House Decision

The third assumption is that Yemeni forces by their attack at the refinery have boosted their morale for their attack at Jizan Airport and destroying Saudi Arabian ground force squadron. And Saudi Arabians due to repeated defeats have gone into solitude because the U.S. and its allies have not come to their rescue.

The fourth assumption is that Ansarullah forces’s last month vast attack on Saudi Arabia’s biggest strategic oil reservoirs which produces over billion barrels of oil by using 10 drones, or their attacks by using drones on Aramco’s oil pumping facilities in last May in Afif Province west of Saudi Arabia all indicate the huge and significant progress and courage of Houthis in launching such attacks. This power has put Saudis in a condition to look for mediator in order to ask Houthis to stop disgracing them more in the world by revealing more photos and statistics about their attacks.

Al Saud were wrong from the beginning. Committing a vast fratricide like what Zionist regime does in killing innocent children caused a hatred among Muslims in the world towards Saudis which will be remembered for ever.

Let’s assume that if Saudis, from the first moment that the dispute between Houthis and the Yemen government began, just tried to resort to holding a referendum and accepting the public opinion, where they could stand now. If Saudis with a popular approach tried to help Yemeni people, then there would be no war and now there could be a popular government in Sanaa and they could consider themselves as supporters of Yemeni people, such a massacre and genocide would not have happened. That approach could save huge wealth of both countries from being wasted for fratricide. How much of this war cost could have been used spent for satisfaction of Muslim people in the region? This diabolic act by reliance on the U.S. had no result but to drag insecurity and foreigners to the region and encourage them. By the way Aramco Company could be warmly welcomed for being listed in the New York Stock Market because the U.S. has no other option than investing in the Middle East.

Today Saudi Arabia is disgraced and winners of this fratricide are UK, the U.S. and Zionist regime. Suppose Saudi Arabia like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon tried to get closer to Iran, today what a great role it could play in administering global policies of Islam. Avoiding ignorance and treason as well as dependence which devastate the nations.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian

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