UN Confirms Iranian Origin Of Houthi Missiles Used Against Saudis, UAE

A treaty between Iran and Belgium, which was signed in March, was brought before parliament on June 29 for approval. 

If approved, it will potentially result in sending back Iranian diplomat Asadollah Assadi, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for masterminding a failed terrorist attack in Europe, back to Iran.

Iranian dissidents have raised alarm on social media that the agreement would mean the Islamic Republic can send agents to target its critics in Belgium and, if arrested and convicted, Brussels will send them home to spend their sentences, because Iran can easily arrest a Belgian on false charges to arrange an exchange. 

Assadi, 50, a former attaché at the Iranian embassy in Austria, was convicted of plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris on June 30, 2018.

The Iranian diplomat -- the ever brought to trial in Europe for direct involvement in terrorism -- was arrested in Germany, where he did not enjoy diplomatic immunity, while he was on holiday. German authorities later extradited Assadi to Belgium. 

Iranian officials say there are no plans to trade EU citizens held in Iran including Ahmadreza Djlali (Jalali), a Swedish-Iranian doctor that Iran says it will execute soon on charges of spying for Israel, with Iranians held in EU countries such as Assadi or Hamid Nouri, facing life imprisonment in Sweden over his role in prison executions of the 1980s.

Iranian government entities have stopped publishing information on fuel use for power generation, but the latest report from the Parliament Research Center in 2020 indicted that the use of mazut had reached 6 billion liters (around 1.6 billion gallons), or 62 percent higher than in 2017.

Mazut is a heavy, dirty fuel which is banned in most countries unless it is blended with less polluting fuels, but in Iran it is used regularly as its export market is limited.

The same report indicated that power plants in 2020 used 11 billion liters of diesel, or more than double than in 2017. In the 2020-2021 winter daily natural gas shortage reached 170 cubic meters and that led to higher usage of polluting fuels.

From 2021, all government and industry sources in Iran stopped publishing figures about usage of dirty fuels in power pants, but scattered media reports indicated that natural gas shortages had started before the winter of 2021-2022, but in the cold months it reached the unprecedented deficit of 250 million cubic meters per day.

In fact, Mehr news agency in Tehran reported in late February that Iran had again become a net diesel importer for the first time since 2014, most likely because of high diesel usage for power generation.

The chronic shortage of natural gas is noteworthy in the context of recent talk about Iran possibly supplying the much-needed fuel to Europe in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, Iran needs around $50 billion in investments to increase its natural gas production, although it has the world’s second largest reserves. At the time being, United States sanctions, as well as general investment risk factors make any infusion of capital and technology highly problematic, but even in the absence of such impediments, it would take years before the country can produce enough for significant exports.

Figures in the BP report show that in 2020 Iran produced 37 terawatts of its electricity from dirty fuels, but in 2021 it reached 49 terawatts. As a result, Iran’s greenhouse gas emissions reached the historic level of 893 million tons, an increase of 4.5 percent over 2020.

Iran is the sixth highest greenhouse gas contributor in the world, afterChina, the United States, India, Japan and Russia. Germany, with an 18-times bigger economy produces 28 percent less air pollution.

The BP report also indicates Iran’s nuclear electricity generation fell by 44 percent to 2.7 terawatts, and hydroelectric power generation decreased by 36 percent, due to drought.

Iran has also lagged in solar and wind energy generation. Last year it produced a combined total of 1.8-terawatt electricity from these renewables while neighboring Turkey generated 35 times more.

Nuclear, solar, and wind electricity generation constituted just over one percent of Iran’s 358 terawatts of electricity generation in 2021.

The USNI, a non-profit professional military forum that offers independent, nonpartisan info on security issues, published a photo of the vessel at Qeshm Madkandaloo Shipbuilding Cooperative Company shipyard on Thursday. It is visible in Airbus commercial satellite imagery shared publicly on Google Earth.

The unidentified catamaran, probably a missile boat, is seen next to another new multi-hulled missile watercraft -- a Shahid Soleimani-class missile corvette – and is characterized by a clean-angled form, appearing stealthier than earlier types. The new type bears some similarities with the Soleimani-class in overall form but is noticeably smaller, measuring about 50 meters (166 feet) long and 14 meters (46 feet) across.

The new vessel appears to lack the helipad that the Shahid Soleimani-class has, but since it is currently unfinished, it is difficult to assess the final fit. However, it does have two cut-outs in the aft deck that are indicative of pop-up missile tubes, likely for four to eight Noor or Qader anti-ship missiles, the Iranian versions of the Chinese C-802 family of sea-skimming missiles roughly equivalent to the US Harpoon and Neptune types.

Last week, IRGC Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri said Shahid Soleimani-class missile corvette, which carries helicopters, will be added to the IRGC Navy's fleet in the near future.

Late in June, Iran repeated its tactic of harassing American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, as three IRGC speedboats came dangerously close to US ships.

Fuad Hussein made the remarks during an interview with the Saudi Al-Arabiya television, without giving any further details. There were no comments from Cairo and Amman on the report. 

Diplomatic representation between Egypt and Iran is at the level of interest section offices since the two countries severed ties following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Hussein called for turning the talks between Tehran and Riyadh into a “declared dialogue”, adding that the focus of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi's visit to Saudi Arabia last Saturday was the dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran, where he went the following day.

Despite all speculations and expectations, Kadhimi’s visit led to no tangible results as the visiting Iraqi premier and Iranian president did not announce any news about Tehran-Riyadh talks during their joint press conference.

Iran and Saudi Arabia -- which are locked in proxy conflicts around the region -- have held several rounds of talks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad since 2021.

It was the Islamic Republic that suspended the talks in March a day after Saudi Arabia announced it had beheaded 81 men, including seven Yemenis and a Syrian, for “heinous crimes.” Forty-one were Saudi Shiites, Human Rights Watch reported, apparently convicted over protests.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in 2016 when mobs attacked its embassy in Tehran after Riyadh executed 47 dissidents including the leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

“These entities use deceptive practices to supply or attempt to supply Iran with US-origin electronics that would ultimately provide support to Iran's military,” the official journal of the federal government the Federal Register said on Thursday. 

The entities are added to the Entity List that means US suppliers need a license before they can ship items to the listed companies.

The companies were among 23 Chinese firms that were added to the trade blacklist this week, including five linked to arms sales to Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In addition to the five Chinese firms, companies in other countries such as Uzbekistan, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Lithuania were identified as supplying military goods to the Russian military since February, when the war began.

Earlier in June, the US Thursday sanctioned Chinese, Emirati and Iranian firms over exporting Iran's petrochemicals in a measure aimed at pushing Iran to renew the 2015 nuclear deal.

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said, “The United States is pursuing the path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action,” but would “continue to use our sanctions to limit exports of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran.”