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By Liz Sly August 11 at 7:12 PM

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — One of America’s staunchest allies in the Middle East and a driving force behind President Trump’s hard-line approach to Iran is breaking ranks with Washington, calling into question how reliable an ally it would be in the event of a war between the United States and Iran.

In the weeks since the United States dispatched naval reinforcements to the Persian Gulf to deter Iranian threats to shipping, the government of the United Arab Emirates has sent a coast guard delegation to Tehran to discuss maritime security, putting it at odds with Washington’s goal of isolating Iran. After limpet mines exploded on tankers off the UAE’s coast in June, the UAE stood apart from the United States and Saudi Arabia and declined to blame Iran.

It also announced a drawdown of troops from Yemen, where, alongside Saudi Arabia, it has been battling Iranian-backed Houthis for control of the country. That opened the door this past weekend to a takeover by UAE-backed separatist militias of the U.S.-supported government in the city of Aden, a further divergence from U.S. policy.

Former U.S. defense secretary Jim Mattis once nicknamed the UAE “Little Sparta” because of its stalwart support for U.S. military ventures around the world, including in Somalia and Afghanistan. Much of the recent war against the Islamic State was launched from the U.S. air base located at al-Dhafra in the UAE, an integral part of America’s security footprint in the Middle East.

But as its relationship with Washington puts the UAE on the front line of a potential war, the Emiratis are shifting gears, calling for de-escalation with Iran and distancing themselves from the Trump administration’s bellicose rhetoric.

“The UAE does not want war. The most important thing is security and stability and bringing peace to this part of the world,” said an Emirati official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive foreign policy issues.

Whether the United States could count on Emirati support should the current tensions lead to war with Iran may now be in doubt, diplomats and analysts say.

“The UAE is increasingly tilting away from U.S. objectives,” said Theodore Karasik of the Washington-based Gulf State Analytics. “Is it the weak link in the Trump policy of maximum pressure? It may be.”

This is not the first time UAE policies have diverged from those of Washington. The small but fabulously wealthy country has over the past decade steadily expanded its reach across the Middle East in pursuit of an agenda driven largely by the staunch opposition of its powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed, to all forms of political Islam.

The UAE sponsored the 2013 coup in Egypt that overthrew country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood government was supported by the United States. It has backed the renegade warlord Khalifa Hifter against the U.S.- and U.N.-backed government in Libya, which is aligned with Islamist militias. It spearheaded a blockade alongside Saudi Arabia against Qatar, an ally of the United States that has promoted Islamist movements in the region.

Abu Dhabi has also embarked on an influence campaign in Washington that has given the UAE a potent voice in the White House, helping shape Middle East policy at the highest levels. The UAE was a vocal critic of the 2015 nuclear pact signed by the United States and other world powers with Iran, and it supported Trump’s decision to walk away from the deal last year.

The UAE never intended the U.S. withdrawal from the deal to lead to confrontations such as those that have taken place in the Persian Gulf, Emirati officials say. Rather, they say, the UAE continues to hope, in line with Washington’s declared policy, that the tough sanctions imposed on Iran by the Trump administration will bring Iran back to the negotiating table.

Instead, Iran has pushed back, embarking on a campaign of threats and harassment against shipping in the Persian Gulf that has drawn U.S. and British naval reinforcements to the area — and appears to have caught the UAE off guard.

The UAE’s location, economy and reputation as a safe haven for foreigners make it uniquely susceptible to the fallout from even a low-level confrontation, perhaps more than any other country in the region, analysts say. The Strait of Hormuz, where war is most likely to break out, envelops the Emirati coastline and the UAE depends on the waterway for the trade on which its economy has soared.

To build the skyscrapers and service the hotels that have attracted tourists and business executives less welcome in many other parts of the Middle East, the country has recruited foreigners from around the world. Expatriates account for about 90 percent of the UAE’s population, and they sustain almost all of its vital infrastructure, including hospitals and the armed forces.

The entire country could be brought to a halt if foreigners were to become frightened and leave, said Elizabeth Dickinson of the International Crisis Group.

“The stakes for the UAE are stupendously high. An attack that hit Emirati soil or damaged their critical infrastructure would be devastating,” she said. “It would symbolically compromise the reputation of one of the region’s most economically dynamic countries.”

That the UAE would be considered a target should war break out was underscored by Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia and Iran’s closest regional ally, in an interview in July. “What will be left of the UAE’s glass towers if a war breaks out?” he asked, in a barely veiled threat. “If the UAE was destroyed . . . would that be in the interests of the Emirati rulers and people?”

Emirati officials dispute that they are switching course and say they intend to remain engaged in the wider region.

The troop drawdown in Yemen had been signaled by senior officials for months, they say, and came about because peace talks sponsored by the United Nations are underway, a goal of the military intervention.

The UAE delegation’s visit to Tehran came in the context of negotiations over fishing rights in the Strait of Hormuz and was not linked to the current crisis, they add. The appeals for de-escalation don’t change the Emiratis’ position on Iran: that its regional expansionism is dangerous and its program to develop an advanced ballistic-missile capability must be curtailed, according to the officials.

But there have been whispered recriminations among Emiratis that the UAE has overreached, that the regional ambitions of Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto leader, have strayed too far from the country’s vision of itself as a beacon of prosperity and stability, according to residents and diplomats.

“It looks like it was overreach, and they didn’t calculate the consequences,” said a Dubai businessman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the UAE’s authoritarian system of government prescribes harsh punishments for those who criticize the leadership.

“Their military expansion destroyed the idea of the UAE being a safe haven, and now they’re feeling the danger of going along with the Americans.”

The UAE’s support for Trump’s retreat from the Iran deal is only the latest in a string of ventures that haven’t worked out quite as the Emiratis intended.

The Yemen war bogged down, dragged on and drew international criticism for the high civilian death toll, even though it was Saudi Arabia that carried out most of the airstrikes that caused the casualties. The two-year-old blockade of Qatar has failed to isolate Qatar from the international community but helped drag down the UAE’s economy. The UAE’s military support for the Libyan warlord Hifter contributed to his stalled offensive on the capital, Tripoli, that has caused bloodshed but no shift in the balance of power in Libya.

In Washington, an apparent attempt by the crown prince to forge ties between Russia and the Trump administration backfired, drawing the UAE into Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Mohammed is the only foreign leader aside from Russian President Vladi­mir Putin to feature in the report, mostly in connection with a 2017 meeting he arranged at his Four Seasons hotel in the Seychelles between Trump associate Erik Prince and Russian financier Kirill Dmitriev.

Investigations into the actions of some of the crown prince’s associates are continuing, including those of Republican fundraiser Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who last week was accused by congressional Democrats of seeking to influence a Trump campaign speech by running parts of it by Emirati officials.

If the UAE made any mistake, it was to align itself too closely with Trump, who has proved highly unpredictable, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist who is based in Dubai. The Emirates welcomed Trump as an alternative to President Barack Obama, whose pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran ignored the concerns of the UAE. Trump has proved an equally unreliable ally, he said.

“Do you really want to have all your eggs in Trump’s basket?” he said. When Trump threatened in June to retaliate against Iran for shooting down an American drone and then changed his mind, “it was a big moment for the UAE and for the region, too. Everyone assumed Trump is someone who carries through with his word, and when the moment came, he just pulled back.”

UAE officials appeared, however, to have been more dismayed by the fact that Trump claimed he was 10 minutes away from striking Iran but did not inform his Emirati allies, diplomats say.

Emirati officials won’t comment on whether they will allow the United States to launch attacks on Iran in the event of a war. They have not yet committed to support a quest by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to form a global maritime security force under U.S. command to secure the safety of shipping.

That has fed speculation about where the UAE stands in the dispute, said Karasik, the analyst. “It’s the big question. Is the UAE breaking away from the U.S.?” he said. “There are domestic economic problems and divisions over what do about Iran. But at the end of the day, the UAE sits under the American security umbrella, and that is what matters.

By Farnaz Fassihi – 8 August 2019

They change offices every few months and store documents only in hard copy. They scan their businesses for covert listening devices and divert all office calls to their cellphones. They know they are under surveillance, and assume their electronics are hacked.

They are not spies or jewel thieves but Iran’s oil traders, and they are suddenly in the cross hairs of international intrigue and espionage.

“Sometimes I feel like I am an actor playing in a thriller spy movie,” said Meysam Sharafi, a veteran oil trader in Tehran.

Since President Trump imposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales last year, information on those sales has become a prized geopolitical weapon — coveted by Western intelligence agencies and top secret for Iran. And the business of selling Iranian oil, once a safe and lucrative enterprise for the well connected, has been transformed into a high-stakes global game of espionage and counterespionage.

Last month, Iran said it had dismantled a spy ring and arrested 17 Iranians it said were working for the C.I.A. The Iranian government was vague on the target of the espionage, for which some of the suspects were sentenced to death, but it now appears that it involved clandestine efforts to gather intelligence on oil sales.

President Trump denied that the suspects worked for the C.I.A., a highly unusual statement from a government that almost never confirms or denies such accusations. A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment.

But American officials acknowledged that Iran’s oil sector is of intense interest to the United States and its intelligence agencies.

Whoever is doing the spying, there is little doubt that cloak-and-dagger tactics have buffeted the shrinking Iranian oil trade. Traders say they have been offered all kinds of enticements in exchange for information.

Eastern Europeans showed up in Tehran with cases of vodka and red wine, promising a steady flow of alcohol and cash and offering to double the broker’s fee. A man claiming to be an American academic offered a $5,000-a-month retainer for help with his research on the oil industry. Armenian prostitutes disguised as businesswomen proposed vacation getaways to Shiraz and Isfahan, ancient Iranian cities known for their history and culture.

The oil traders say foreigners, who they assume are working on behalf of the United States, have offered astronomical sums, ranging from $100,000 to $1 million, just for the bank account numbers the Oil Ministry used in a sale. Some of the foreigners have promised visas to the United States, the traders said.

One trader admitted to having been duped: The Armenian prostitutes persuaded him to use their names to register front companies in Armenia to facilitate banking transactions. After the women were caught soliciting clients in Iran, he said, Iranian security forces called him in for questioning and he ended the relationship.

Foreign clients, too, are paranoid because of the secondary sanctions that the United States would place on them if they are caught buying Iranian oil. Traders said that on trips abroad, clients asked them to switch hotels in the middle of the night. Traders said it was not uncommon to be questioned at airports overseas. In at least one case, a foreign customer dispatched female agents, dressed in tight dresses and heels, to test what information a trader might divulge.

If the spying charges were intended to send a message to Iran’s oil traders, the message was heard.

One trader said he called the intelligence branch of the Oil Ministry and proactively gave him some information about a suspicious European who had visited his office. Another deleted text messages and blocked the number of a woman who introduced herself as a Swedish Ph.D. student researching Iran’s oil trade.

Hassan Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, a newspaper affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, confirmed that the spy ring arrests involved oil espionage. So did an Iranian politician and two oil traders, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

Many of the 17 people accused of spying had worked in the oil and energy sector as traders and brokers, the two traders said. They had come under scrutiny because of contacts with foreigners on their trips abroad.

Separately, Iran said in June that it had arrested a woman who worked at a European energy firm, accusing her of obtaining oil sales documents by cultivating senior and middle managers at the Oil Ministry.

Because Iran’s economy depends on oil, and on evading American sanctions, keeping oil sales secret is considered crucial.

“How we evade sanctions to sell our oil and how we move the money is now the country’s most vital and sensitive information,” Mr. Soleimani, the editor, said. “Nothing is more important.”

Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, banned the release of oil data last year after Washington quit the Iran nuclear deal and imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and financial transactions.

“Information about Iran’s oil exports is war information,” he said in July.

Of the 10 people who on average contact the Oil Ministry each day to inquire about purchasing oil, Mr. Zanganeh has said, seven are not genuine customers. “They are after figuring out our entire system,” he told Iranian news media in June.

The White House said the aim of the sanctions, which were tightened in May, was “to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.”

While that goal has not been met, analysts estimate that Iran’s foreign oil sales have fallen steeply, from 2.5 million barrels a day before the first set of sanctions took effect in 2018 to about 500,000 barrels a day now.

The cold conflict has spilled into the seas, where Iran was blamed for sabotage attacks on six oil tankers, and the air, where the United States and Iran have each downed the other’s drone.

Last month, Britain seized an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar that it said was destined for Syria in violation of international sanctions against Syria. Iran retaliated by seizing a British tanker in the Persian Gulf, a pointed reminder that any military effort to enforce the oil sanctions could quickly heat up.

The information war has been quieter but no less vital. Information about Iran’s oil production, prices, sales and exports are a crucial tool for Washington to gauge the effect of the sanctions and carry out its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

“The U.S. wants the information on oil exports so they can have a sense of how much hard currency Iran is earning,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security and a former senior Treasury official in the Obama administration. “Then they can have a sense of how much they have to squeeze Iran to get its leaders to change their political calculus.”

Iran is a tough intelligence target because Iranians work through “personal relationships of trust,” she said, avoiding some of the telltale trappings and mechanisms of the international oil trade and operating with extreme discretion.

Iran has adopted an array of measures to circumvent sanctions, say traders and oil experts, including turning off the GPS locaters on its oil tankers, transferring oil from ship to ship in open waters, mixing its oil with Iraqi oil leaving the port of Basra, and falsifying shipping manifests to reflect a non-Iranian origin.

Iran has also tightened its oil trading system and increased security to make it more difficult to penetrate and track. Three Iranian oil traders described the changes to The New York Times, requesting anonymity over concerns for their safety.

The thousands of freestyle brokers who put together oil deals between buyers and the Oil Ministry were replaced by a handful of authorized, vetted traders. They report to four senior retired Oil Ministry officials, who have divided the market by region.

A former oil minister and Revolutionary Guards commander, Rostam Ghasemi, took charge of exports to Syria. The other three handled China, India and Europe.

Each purchase plan is customized depending on who is buying, how much they are buying and where the cargo is going — with the goal of constantly changing the method to elude sanctions monitors.

Buyers were required to send representatives to Tehran as a way to protect information and to identify serious clients.

Traders were ordered not to discuss price, shipping or payment with prospective clients. Their main job is to determine whether prospective buyers are legitimate, and then send a proposal to one of the four senior officials.

The Oil Ministry’s security wing holds regular workshops and briefing sessions to train the traders on security and counterespionage tactics.

“The space surrounding us has become intensely security oriented,” said Mr. Sharafi, one of the traders.

To encourage buyers, Iran typically sells its oil about $4 a barrel under the market price. It requires a 10 percent down payment and full payment before allowing the oil barrels to be offloaded at destination ports.

The payment phase is the most closely guarded step. Overseas bank accounts are opened and closed within a few hours, just long enough to make deposits and transfers. While those transactions are taking place, traders and buyers are kept under surveillance at a guesthouse belonging to the Oil Ministry. They are served kebabs and Persian tea and their phones are confiscated to prevent leaks.

Once the deal is complete, they are free to leave.

Oil traders say the new system is doing its job.

“Our worst fears about the economy collapsing did not materialize,” said Farshad Toomaj, a former trader who consults for the Oil Ministry from Sweden. “Iran has become very creative and sophisticated in coming up with dynamic ways to sell oil.”

The Trump administration’s nonresponse to Iranian aggression has sent an unmistakable message.

By: Steven Cook – AUGUST 1, 2019

It has long been an accepted fact within the U.S. foreign-policy community that if any country blocked or interfered with shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States and its allies would use the awesome force at their disposal to defend freedom of navigation. Yet like so much else in this era, long-held truths and ironclad laws have turned out to be elaborate fictions.

The United States has invested great sums in the Middle East over many decades to undertake a few important tasks—notably protecting the sea lines—but this task does not seem to be something the current president believes to be a core American interest. After all, on June 24, President Donald Trump tweeted: “China gets 91% of its Oil from the Straight, Japan 62%, & many other countries likewise. So why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries (many years) for zero compensation. All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been a dangerous journey.”

Anyone who still believes that the United States is going to challenge Iran directly should reread Trump’s tweet. It is more than that, however. It is a harbinger of what is to come in U.S. foreign policy.

The United States is leaving the Persian Gulf. Not this year or next, but there is no doubt that the United States is on its way out. Aside from the president’s tweet, the best evidence of the coming American departure from the region is Washington’s inaction in the face of Iran’s provocations.

Officials and analysts will often counter this, conjuring the number of personnel, planes, and ships the United States maintains in and around the Gulf, but leaders in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, and Muscat understand what is happening. They have been worrying about the U.S. commitment to their security for some time and have been hedging against an American departure in a variety of ways, including by making overtures to China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey. On Wednesday, the Emiratis and Iranians met for the first time in six years to discuss maritime security in the Gulf. That is a positive development. And while both sides insist the meeting was routine and low-level, there is no doubt that American inaction has officials in Abu Dhabi rethinking how to deal with the Iranian challenge, which may run counter to U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran.

By all measures, the Persian Gulf had been quiet since Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took nine American sailors and a naval officer for less than 24 hours after their two small vessels crossed into Iranian territorial water in January 2016. Things changed in May, however. Since then, the United States and others allege that Iranian forces have attacked six oil tankers; IRGC naval forces attempted to impede a British vessel traversing the Strait of Hormuz; the Iranians shot down an American drone; the United States shot down an Iranian drone; and the Iranians have taken the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero. (There were two other vessels that the Iranians briefly stopped but permitted to continue on their way.) The impounding of the Stena Impero is a direct response to the British seizure of an Iranian-flagged supertanker on July 4 near Gibraltar on suspicion that it was bound for Syria.

If the official policy of the United States and its allies were to be believed, the Iranian threat to freedom of navigation in and around the Gulf was supposed to be met with a tough response, but it has mostly produced hand-wringing. When the Stena Impero was seized, the then-British foreign minister vowed that there would be “serious consequences” for Iran but at the same time affirmed that the British government was “not looking at military options.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brushed off questions about the incident, stating that British-flagged vessels are the responsibility of the United Kingdom.

Since then, the United States has developed a plan for ensuring security in the Gulf, but it seems to be the plan of a country that has one foot out the door and prefers not to get entangled in the region further. To keep the Iranians at bay, the U.S. Navy would supply command and control ships while other countries would be responsible for escorting their own flagged ships. The British have other plans. They want to establish a coalition of European navies (with an American role) to escort shipping in the Persian Gulf. The Royal Navy convened a meeting in Bahrain on Wednesday with the French and Germans to discuss the plan. No one wants war, and there is a case to be made that escalation in the face of the IRGC’s provocation is unwise, but these maritime security plans do not seem serious.

It is hard to know what the Iranians are up to; perhaps they are trying to force a negotiation to alleviate the “maximum pressure” the Trump administration has sought to apply, or maybe their actions simply reflect Tehran’s fundamental hostility to international norms. For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared that Iran was taking a stand for multilateralism. Whatever they want, the IRGC’s commanders must by now understand that they can pretty much do anything they want in the Persian Gulf without fear of reprisal. This is because Trump has made it clear in word and deed that the United States is on the way out of the region. If the United States intended to stay in the Gulf and fulfill what many had long believed to be a commitment to keep the sea lanes open, it would not be so feckless.

Sure the Trump administration just deployed about 1,500 soldiers to the Gulf and sent additional warplanes to bases there, but they have not proved to be a deterrent, and the president does not seem inclined to use American force. Trump called off a strike in retaliation for the Iranian destruction of an American drone because he feared it would kill 150 people. That speaks well of the president, but it is hard to believe there was nothing in between killing a lot of Iranians and not responding. He won temporary plaudits for his restraint, but the scrubbed mission was an excuse to do nothing. The bottom line is that the United States is only prepared to bear the minimum cost of protecting the Persian Gulf’s shipping lanes and America’s adversaries in Iran know it.

Trump has begun operationalizing something that former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and other U.S. officials have articulated in various ways over the last 15 years: The United States is now energy independent, and the Persian Gulf is no longer as important as it once was. That may not be entirely accurate, but Trump doesn’t care. He wants to leave the Middle East, the United States doesn’t need the oil, and the Persian Gulf is someone else’s problem. That message is inviting the IRGC to prey on more tankers.

· Three firms have been accused of or appear to be involved in the sanctioned trade in Iranian oil

Tracking data and business records indicate a pair of shadowy Lebanon-based companies own and operate tankers illicitly transporting Iranian oil in the eastern Mediterranean. While there is no direct indication on the accounts, an analysis of one of the companies involved suggests the man running the operation may be a prominent Syrian businessman sanctioned by the United States.

Data from TankerTrackers.com, a US company closely tracking Iranian oil shipments, shows that the tankers Sandro and Jasmine have conducted transfers of Iranian oil to or from other vessels off Syria’s coast after turning off their location transponders.

Iran regularly uses “ghost ships” – tankers that have turned off their location transponders to obscure their movements – to carry out ship-to-ship transfers of oil in a bid to evade US sanctions on both Iran and Syria

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On July 25, the Iranian-flagged Suezmax tanker Silvia I, which is sanctioned by the US, conducted a ship-to-ship transfer of oil to the Sandro tanker a little under 20 kilometres off Syria’s coast, according to TankerTrackers.com.

Approximately 500,000 barrels of crude oil were delivered to the Sandro, TankerTrackers.com co-founder Samir Madani told The National. Since this ship-to-ship transfer, the Sandro has remained near Syria’s coast, Mr Madani added.

The Sandro’s suspicious activities in the Mediterranean began after Lebanese firm Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) SAL became the registered owner and commercial manager of the vessel on May 30.

Five days later, the Sandro turned off its transponder south of Limassol, Cyprus, and since then has not reported its position, effectively disappearing from public sight.

However, TankerTrackers.com has used satellite imagery to track the vessel’s activities.

On June 26, the Sandro received approximately 350,000 barrels of refined oil from the Iran-flagged tanker Jasmine, TankerTrackers.com said, adding that the firm “could not see where the Sandro then took that oil cargo.”

The Jasmine is already on the radar of the US government for its illicit activities. On March 25, the US Treasury included the vessel on a list of tankers that have carried out ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum destined for Syria. It stopped short of sanctioning the vessel.

Similar to the Sandro, the Jasmine has gone dark in the Mediterranean. It too is owned by a Lebanese firm. Africo 1 (Off-Shore) SAL became the registered owner and ship manager of the vessel on February 26. Further commercial links exist between the tankers.

The two Lebanese firms that acquired the Sandro and Jasmine share the same owners, according to corporate records reviewed by The National. These records reveal that Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) and Africo 1 (Off-Shore) came under new ownership in December 2018 and January 2019.

The firms’ former legal representative told The National that the two companies, founded in 2011, were long dormant when they changed hands.

Neither firm engaged in maritime shipping under their previous owners, he added.

The three new listed owners of these companies – Marwan Ramadan, Bilal Atris and Khalid Deeb – are Lebanese nationals in their 30s who reside in central Beirut, according to copies of their IDs obtained by The National. They could not be reached for comment.

Little information is publicly available on Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) and Africo 1 (Off-Shore).

In mid-July, Al-Watan published an article criticizing Syria’s Oil Ministry for awarding Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) a contract to process oil residues from eastern Syria.

In its analysis of the controversy, the Syria Report business newsletter said that there is a “high probability” that Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) is affiliated to Samer Foz, one of the most prominent businessmen in Syria.

By winning the contract, Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) is set to replace another Lebanese company, Synergy SAL Offshore, which processed eastern Syria oil residues in 2018.

Like it successor for the contract, Synergy SAL Offshore has been involved in Iranian oil shipments.

In June, the US sanctioned Synergy SAL Offshore for facilitating the shipment of Iranian oil to Syria.

“Synergy SAL (Offshore) has shipped tens of thousands of metric tons of Iranian oil into Syria in the past year by sea,” the US Treasury said in a press release.

There is also another tie between Synergy SAL (Offshore) and Sandro Overseas (Off Shore).

Both firms share the same address in downtown Beirut’s Al-Azarieh Building office complex, according to their corporate records. The National visited the address, a company providing virtual offices and co-working spaces.

Neither Synergy SAL Offshore nor Sandro Overseas (Off Shore) were present at the location.

Africo 1 (Off-Shore) also uses the Al-Azarieh Building as an address and was also not present at the office complex.

In another indication of Mr Foz’s involvement, when The National phoned the number listed on a Synergy SAL Offshore letterhead, the recipient denied the number was for the company. Instead, the receptionist said the number belonged to a different Beirut-based firm that corporate records lists Mr Foz as a part-owner.

Lebanese corporate records reviewed by The National showed that the other firm is minority-owned by Bashar Assi, a top Syrian businessman sanctioned by the EU in January 2019 for his role in Mr Foz’s business ventures.

The US sanctioned Mr Foz in June, accusing the businessman of “profiting heavily from reconstruction efforts in Syria, including through luxury developments on land seized by the Syrian regime from its own people.”

“Samer Foz, his relatives, and his business empire have leveraged the atrocities of the Syrian conflict into a profit-generating enterprise,” the US Treasury Department statement said.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Tonight our special guest Mr Hassan Shariatmadari will share his views with us about the creation of the Council for Transition of Power in Iran.

Hassan Shariatmadari:

The process of the establishment of the Council is going ahead according to theplan and we expect by the middle of September we should be able to officially launch it through a press conference attended by the media and our members.

However, as for the expansion of this Council we had already been talking to different opposition groups and have indicated that the doors of this Council are open to all those who are struggling to establish a civil society in Iran.

Having said that, our efforts outside Iran can never substitute the heroic struggle of all those men and women who are sacrificing their lives inside Iran itself to achieve this objective.

However, the sporadic struggle of all of us makes us prone to be targeted by the regime’s repressive reactions and disjoin our struggle.

As such, we believe a secure central command office that provides a platform for all of us to share our thoughts and ideas with each other is necessary.

We never claim to be the leader of this freedom movement or represent our entire nation and can say we humbly wish to be at the service of all of our dear and struggling people of Iran and our main task is to remove from their minds the fear as to what happens after the present regime is ousted.

There are questions in their minds that if Iran will be partitioned after this regime is gone or if the clerics leave the scene the Revolutionary Guards might take over.

These are very serious doubts that the middle classes might have and our task is to organize a national freedom movement that could attract international support for its success.

At the same time we want to inform our people that any elections that this regime holds is false and its results are rigged and they must not take part in them as the only one that benefits from such staged elections are the factions of the regime and Iran and the Iranians are the losers.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

I believe the movement of groups of Iranians announcing their support for theopen letter of 14 civil rights activists that calls on Khamenei to step down and holding a referendum for a new system of governance for Iran, is in fact the continuation of the uprising that swept across more than 130 cities of our country in December 2017.

One of the reasons that the protestors themselves involved in those uprisings pointed out about why their movement died down was because it did not have any clear strategy or manifesto to rally the people around them.

That movement was not just about the increase in the price of bread or the fall in the value of Iran’s currency against the US dollar.

Iranian women have been at the forefront of all social upheavals in the last 40 years.

One of these freedom fighter women whom I have had the pleasure of knowing since she used to work with me in Omide Iran magazine has been the lawyer Giti Pourfazel.

I have now managed to find her after many years and she will now share her views and experiences about the role of Iranian women in freeing our country from its despotic rulers.

Giti Pourfazel:

I am sure you do remember the first act of the present regime in Iran after the revolution was to ban women lawyers from practice.

Ayatollah Mohammadi Gilani wrote an edict on a piece of scrap paper that the 57 womenlawyers in the previous justice department of Iran had no right to continuewith our jobs.

Some 14 years later we decided to appeal against this discriminatory act and renew our license.

However, while a number of our licenses were renewed, those lawyers who had dared challenge the regime by defending their clients still remained banned from practicing their offices.

I was asked by the mother and sister of the late Sattar Beheshti to seek justice for his murder while in detention on charges of insulting the regime’s rules.

You can imagine how they had felt when their son had been arrested on phony charges and the next thing they hear from the authorities after a few days is come and collect the dead body of Sattar.

These women have been very brave by insisting that Sattar has been killed unlawfully and those responsible must be brought to justice.

The interrogator of Sattar, a Mr Akbari, had himself confessed that he had beaten Sattar Beheshti during his detention.

It has now been medically established that sadly Sattar had died after receiving a heavy blow to his brain, which resulted in severe internal bleeding.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

In my poem tonight I also mentioned a pome by Mohammad Zohali in which he describes how our nation repeatedly falls into the trap of despotism.

Right now the open protest of the original group of 14 civil rights activists has led to other groups of 14 protestors come forward from different section of oursociety and the latest of them is a group of women’s rights activists.

If this protest movement continues to grow I am sure it will oust the regime.

However, some of these protestors including Fateme Sepehri, Mohammad Hossein Sepehri, Mohammad Norizad, Javad Laal Mohammadi, hashem Khastar and Mortazavi have now been arrested.

I believe it is now high time our workers, students and teachers join this movement and I call upon them to wake up from their lethargic state and change Iran’s future now.

We are facing a corrupt regime whose main preoccupation is to suppress our people and steal their wealth and torture and kill anyone who dares challenge its policies.

Further more, the rulers of this regime are in their late eighties and are now transferring their illegitimate power and wealth to their offspring throughcreating many bogus councils and government bodies and handing them over totheir children.

The regime spends millions of dollars in foreign countries for its nefarious acts and deceives masses through superstition and propaganda.

Later in the program we will look at the comments of the former governor of Iran’s central bank who has said that nowadays, Iranian families melt their gold coins and turn them into cutleries because the country’s national currency has collapsed and has no place in trading contracts.

We all know that Iran’s currency before the revolution was one the most valued ones in international trade and it has now become almost redundant as a result of the tyrannical rule of its present regime which is completely corrupt and is not accountable to the nation.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Tonight we speak to our special guest Dr. Mohammad Hossein Sadigh Yazdchi who would share with us his views about why the Constitution Revolution of 1905 in Iran was made by a handful of educated elite and so much sacrifices by the likes of Sattar Khan, but only five clergies’ rulings affected the outcome of this secular revolution which finally ended in the complete victory for the religious establishment in 1979 revolution.

Dr. Sadigh Yazdchi:

The question is much more complicated than this. It must be why the Iranian people did not follow the ideals and thoughts of those who wanted to establish theprinciples of the constitution revolution and those ideal were only limited to the elite.

The fact remains that there had been many obstacles on the path of realizing those ideals which continued up until the 1979 revolution, which finally resulted in the clerical regime overwriting the secular 1905 revolution.

It was not just the despotic system of the Qajar’s monarchy that was the target of the constitution revolution. It had to demolish many other entities that were related to this system, including the aristocracy, the feudalism, warlords and powerful families, to be able to establish a workable secular system of governance for Iran.

We must note that Iran’s traditional political culture has been a religious one since many centuries ago. The definition of Iranian nation had long been structured around religious identity as a people who followed Shia Islam, which provided them with a security against the Sunni countries that encircled it.

That is why the secular constitution revolution of the 1905 could easily be redirected towards a religious path, which was finally overturned completely in 1979 revolution.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We continue the program with talking to our special guest of every Thursday, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara, for his views about news of Iran and the Middle East.

I wonder if you have seen the video clip of a lorry that is supposedly carrying vegetables but when it overturns its delivery scatters over the road and becomes chicken skin, while the passers by look at it in disbelief.

Mohsen Sazegara:

Once every now and again the issue of the problems with the country’s food and drugs supplies become the headlines but then are forgotten after a while.

I read in the papers last week that some one had “imported” some out of date and corrupted medicines into the country inside several suitcases and 52 peoplehave become blind after taking them.

In any other country of the world tragedies like this would result in resignation and sacking of all those officials involved in their health and safety institutes.

In US a major pharmaceutical company whose drug had caused the death of a patient has been taken to the court by the House’s relevant committee, but in Iran the Majles deputies are a bunch of useless people that no one takes them seriously.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Khamenei has done to our parliament the same thing that the despot Mohammad Ali Shah of Qajar did a century ago by turning it into a discredited institute so he could rule over the governments.

Now the Caspian Sea legal status has denied Iran’s historic rights and given them away to Putin’s Russia and the Majles deputies have remained silent while the traitors to Iran’s interests are selling out our country.

Mohsen Sazegara:

Last year this time we did discuss this issue and gave warning that if the Caspian Sea’s borders are re-written and we lose our rights to the Russians and other countries involved in this new pact, then even when the present regime in Iran is gone we cannot complain in any international courts of justice to get our territories back.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We did mention that the Iranian month of Amordad is a significant month in ournational calendar as it coincides with the anniversary of the Constitution Revolution of 1905.

However, it is also a sad reminder of how the current tyrannical and corrupt regime in Iran has murdered, executed and slaughtered so many of our people who daredoppose its rule during this month.

One of these victims has been the late Dr. Shapoor Bakhtiar, who as Dr. Amouzagar (one of his ministers) ha said, millions of Iranians now look upon him as a man who single handedly stood up against one dictatorial regime and gave his life for Iran and the Iranians.

Another crime of the regime was committed by a professional assassin, Akbar Khosh Kooshk, who entered Germany with the sole mission of murdering Fereydoun Farokhzad, the popular Iranian entertainer and showman.

I interviewed Farokhzad before his death who spoke about his own tragedies inlife of dealing with his disabled child, losing his great poet sister Forough and how he had left his loving mum to come and live in exile.

The regime had sent a message to Farokhzad that he is free to come back to Iran and look after his sick mother but it was all a plot to lure him into meeting with Khosh Kooshk who then murdered him at his home.

The regime also killed the son of Reza Fazeli by bombing his shop in London, where he was selling a videotape of a satirical play that criticized the regime.

In the second part of tonight’s program we will look at this year’s hajj and the latest news of Iran and the Middle East.