The regime in Tehran is in lots of trouble these days. As U.S. sanctions tighten, at least a quarter of Iran’s oil rigs are now out of action, ‘dealing a potentially long-term blow to its oil industry.’ The coronavirus ‘has now spread to every province in the country and people are fearful that the true scale of the outbreak is even worse than is being disclosed.’
Sanctions against Iran begun by US President Trump in 2018 have severely affected its oil industry, reducing the number of barrels per day (BPD) the Islamic Republic exports by half.
The one-two punch of coronavirus and an escalating oil price war that is roiling world markets is hurting one country more than any other: Iran.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 2,000 points on Monday, its worst day since 2008, as fears about the spread of the new coronavirus and an oil price war sent investors scrambling out of stocks.
Oil futures tumbled 31% in a matter of seconds overnight on Sunday, their sharpest decline since the Gulf War in 1991. The losses are being fueled by sinking demand due to coronavirus concerns, which has in turn sparked a series of price cuts.
The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in January as exports fell but imports fell more. The politically sensitive trade gap with China widened.
Twenty Iranians recently flew out of Tehran to get baptized in a secret location outside of the Islamic Republic.
Tensions between Democratic Party loyalists and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are reaching a boiling point as the democratic socialist cemented his front-runner status for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
Suspected Islamic gunmen interrupted a weekly worship service at a Protestant church in northern Burkina Faso, killing 24 people, authorities confirmed late Monday, February 17. Another 18 people were wounded in Sunday’s attack rocking Pansy town in Yagha province, the regional governor said.
The U.S. trade deficit fell for the first time in six years in 2019 as President Donald Trump hammered China with import taxes.
U.S. troops reportedly blocked a Russian military convoy from reaching strategic oil fields in northeastern Syria on Sunday – the fourth confrontation between the two sides in Syria in less than two weeks.
Ahead of the unveiling of the Trump administration’s long-delayed Mideast peace proposal, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left Israel for Washington on Sunday speaking about an extraordinary moment in his country’s history, even as Hamas pledged to use ‘all means of resistance’ to foil a plan Palestinians view as heavily weighted in Israel’s favor.
President Trump says he is determined to keep control of Syrian oil fields as the country’s civil war plays out, but exactly how far the U.S. military is willing to go to protect those valuable energy reserves remains a mystery and represents a key question for the administration’s broader policy in the Middle East.
U.S. troops last weekend reportedly found themselves in a standoff with Russian forces trying to gain access to key oil fields in northeastern Syria.
Israel’s internal security agency says it has thwarted over 560 ‘significant’ terror plots, including suicide attacks, in the past year.
The Trump administration is days away from announcing a plan to limit the automatic provision of U.S. citizenship to people born in the United States whose parents are non-citizens visiting the country, a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
Iraqi security forces wounded dozens of protesters on Sunday as renewed anti-government demonstrations gripped the capital and Iraq’s south, activists and officials said.
The European Union has urged Turkey to drop plans to drill for oil and gas around Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, saying such exploration was ‘illegal.’
Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned Wednesday that if Israel succeeds in imposing ‘an unthinkable solution’ by annexing parts of the West Bank, hopes for a two-state solution and Palestinian state would quickly come to an end.
The U.S.-China trade war is set to enter a new, quieter phase on Wednesday as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He sign an initial trade deal that aims to vastly increase Chinese purchases of U.S. manufactured products, agricultural goods, energy, and services.