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Brent futures hit their highest in two years while West Texas Intermediate rose to a level unseen in almost three years.

Oil prices kept climbing on Wednesday on signs of strong fuel demand in some economies, while the possibility of Iranian oil returning to global markets was cast in doubt after the United States secretary of state said sanctions against Tehran were not likely to be lifted.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures were up 44 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $72.66 a barrel at 13:38 GMT, having earlier hit $72.83, the highest since May 2019.

United States benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were 30 cents higher, or 0.4 percent, at $70.35 a barrel. Earlier, they touched $70.62, the highest since October 2018.

The supercharged multi-year oil prices are a reflection of the improved oil demand sentiment, and along with it, the expectation that crude and products inventories will significantly be reduced in the second half of 2021 as a post-pandemic new normal of oil consumption sets in, Rystad Energys Oil Markets Analyst Louise Dickson said in a Wednesday note.

American drivers are hitting the road again as COVID-19 restrictions are rolled back and vaccination campaigns ramp up catalysing crude demand.

In the US, demand for gasoline and diesel is increasing ahead of the summer driving season, which this year is getting an extra boost of momentum as it coincides with the successful vaccination campaign that has allowed the economy to open up and oil demand to tick higher, Dickson added.

On Tuesday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast fuel consumption growth this year in the US, the worlds biggest oil user, would be 1.49 million barrels per day (bpd), up from a previous forecast of 1.39 million bpd.

In another bullish sign, industry data showed US crude oil inventories fell last week.

Price gains had been capped in recent weeks as oil investors had been assuming that sanctions against Iranian exports would be lifted and oil supply would increase this year as Tehrans talks with the US on reviving the Iran-nuclear pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), progressed.

But on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cast doubt over the prospects for imminent relief for Irans oil sector after he told a US Senate committee: I would anticipate that even in the event of a return to compliance with the JCPOA, hundreds of sanctions will remain in place, including sanctions imposed by the [President Donald] Trump administration. If they are not inconsistent with the JCPOA, they will remain unless and until Irans behavior changes.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a grouping known as OPEC+, has not indicated whether it will stick to supply restraints beyond July.

OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo has recently said that OPEC+ foresees inventories falling further in the coming months.

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Oil hits two-year high as doubts gather over Irans market return - Al Jazeera English

1. Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran's capital  Associated Press
2. Firefighters battle massive fire at Iranian oil refinery  CNN
3. Oil Refinery Fire Near Irans Capital Burns into Second Day  Voice of America
4. Iran: Huge fire reported in oil refinery in Tehran  The Jerusalem Post
5. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran's capital - Associated Press

In two weeks, when Iran is scheduled to hold its presidential election, Narges Mohammadi will be staying home. One of her countrys most courageous human-rights activists, she views the upcoming vote as a sham.

The principle of absolute jurisprudence has invalidated all the principles of the Iranian constitution and reduced the power of other institutions to zero, she told me in an WhatsApp interview from Iran. The countrys unelected supreme leader and the countrys Guardian Council, which vets presidential candidates and can overturn laws passed by Irans legislature, have consolidated power.

As if to prove her point, the Guardian Council last month disqualified all but seven candidates from running for president. That decision has drawn rebukes even from Iranian leaders who are supportive of the ruling regime.

But Mohammadis criticism is deeper. As a journalist in the late 1990s, she supported the reformer president, Mohammed Khatami. Now, she has concluded that elections offer no chance for Iran to make the transition to a true democracy.

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In previous elections, she said, Iranians voted for candidates who could create a rift in the system. This split could then create breathing space for the people to achieve democracy and political and civic activity, she said. Now this strategy has reached a dead end.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was one of the hardliners who foiled the reforms of Khatami when he authorized a crackdown on student protesters in 1999. Nonetheless, when he won the presidential election in 2013, he was often portrayed as a moderate capable of bringing his country into the community of nations.

Instead, under his presidency Iran has become far more repressive which Mohammadi knows firsthand. Since the late 1990s, she has been prosecuted and jailed for her advocacy work. Under Rouhani, her plight worsened. The organization she helped lead, Defenders of Human Rights Center, was closed. For the last six years, the state has barred her from seeing her children. Last October, after serving more than eight years of a 10-year sentence, she was released from Irans notorious Evin Prison.

Now she faces 30 months in prison and 80 lashes for the crime of participating in a prison sit-in to protest the violent repression of popular protests in November 2019. She does not necessarily fear a new trial, she told me. But she wants the world to know that I was brutally and shamelessly assaulted by the security and non-uniform agents of the head of the prison.

One might think that a person so brutalized by Irans regime would favor the harsh secondary sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018. But she considers the sanctions a mistake.

She told me that the secondary sanctions which freeze revenue from Irans main export, oil have the effect of harming both the regime and the Iranian people. (Like Mohammadi, many Iranian human-rights activists do not support the sanctions, though some dissidents do.) That said, Mohammadi supports individual sanctions on human-rights violators in Iran. She supports the idea of prohibiting their participation in international forums and said the international community should work to cut off and control their movements.

At the same time, Mohammadi is critical of the current nuclear diplomacy with Iran. As she sees it, current talks in Vienna should focus not just on Irans nuclear program but on the issue of human rights.

Western governments should respect the concept of the right to self-determination and national sovereignty in the true sense, she told me. This right is enshrined in the charter of the United Nations and it is systematically flouted by the current Iranian regime, which continues to erase the few remnants of that countrys history of constitutional government.

And that brings things back to Irans upcoming presidential elections. They are best seen as a kind of propaganda to persuade gullible outsiders that a clerical tyranny has democratic legitimacy. Narges Mohammadi knows better. Thats why she will be boycotting them.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Iran's Leading Human-Rights Activist Is Boycotting Its Election - Bloomberg

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Satellite photographs taken Thursday show the burned hulk that remains of Irans biggest warship after it caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Oman.

The photos from Planet Labs Inc., analyzed by The Associated Press, show the 207-meter (679-foot) Kharg just off the coast of the Iranian port city of Jask, surrounded by a sea of oil-slicked waters. Iranian officials have not acknowledged the pollution left behind by the ships sinking on Wednesday.

The photos show the ship partially submerged, with debris floating in the water around it.

Iranian state media reported that 400 sailors and trainee cadets on board fled the vessel, while 33 suffered injuries in the incident. Iranian officials have offered no cause for the fire.

The fire Wednesday aboard the Kharg warship follows a series of mysterious explosions that began in 2019, targeting commercial ships in the Gulf of Oman. The US Navy accused Iran of targeting the ships with limpet mines, timed explosives typically attached by divers to a vessels hull.

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Oil-slicked waters spread out from the partially sunk Iranian navy vessel Kharg in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Jask, Iran, in this Thursday, June 3, 2021, satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)

Iran denied that, though US Navy footage showed Revolutionary Guard members removing one unexploded limpet mine from a ship. The attacks came amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers. Negotiations on saving the accord continue in Vienna.

In April, an Iranian ship called the MV Saviz believed to be a Guard base and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen was targeted in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Israel. It escalated a yearslong shadow war in the Mideast between the two countries, ranging from strikes in Syria, assaults on ships and attacks on Irans nuclear program.

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Satellite photos show hulk of what was biggest Iran warship - The Times of Israel

Irans presidential election will be held in less than two weeks and Ebrahim Raisi, the head of the countrys judiciary, appears to be the top contender. This raises the question: Who exactly is he?

Born in 1960 in the city of Mashhad, Ebrahim Rais Al-Sadati attended a Shiite seminary in his home town during the era of Mohammed Reza Shah. He later moved to Qoms seminary. As an ambitious teenager amid the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Raisi began cooperating with Ayatollah Khomeinis political party. He seized the opportunity and proved his loyalty to the revolutionary ideals of Khomeini, the founding father of the Islamic Republic.

By showing that he would not hesitate to suppress those who oppose the Islamic Republic or pose a threat to its survival, Raisi was appointed a judge in the Karaj Prosecutors Office at the age of just 19, even though he had no formal university education. A year later, he was appointed as prosecutor for Karaj, the fourth-largest city in Iran. In addition, he was also appointed as the prosecutor for Hamadan Province in the west of the country, holding both positions at the same time.

From Khomeinis viewpoint, Raisi was successful at proving his loyalty as a prosecutor in the first few years after the revolution. He reportedly silenced many dissidents and oppositional groups. Raisi later wielded even more power and would directly communicate with Khomeini.

At age 24, Raisi was appointed deputy of the Revolutionary Courts prosecutors office, where he would be known for and implicated in one of the worlds largest mass executions, as a member of the Death Commission. More than 30,000 people were executed, including children and pregnant women, during the 1988 purge. A 2016 US draft resolution stated: Over a four-month period in 1988, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners and many unrelated political groups According to a report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the massacre was carried out pursuant to a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

The late Hussein-Ali Montazeri one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, a human rights activist, Islamic theologian and the designated successor to Khomeini until the very last moments of the latters life said of the massacre: I believe this is the greatest crime committed in the Islamic Republic since the (1979) revolution and history will condemn us for it History will write you down as criminals.

From Khomeinis viewpoint, Raisi was successful at proving his loyalty as a prosecutor in the first few years after the revolution.

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Montazeri pleaded with Raisi and his colleagues to stop the executions. In his memoirs, he stated: It was first of (the Islamic month of) Muharram; I asked Mr. Nayyeri, Mr. Eshraqi, Mr. Raisi and Mr. Pourmohammadi and said, Now is Muharram. At least stop the executions in Muharram. Mr. Nayyeri told me: We have so far executed 750 in Tehran and separated 200 as those persevering on their position. Let us finish them and then, whatever you say, we shall do it.

After a decade of successfully cracking down on the opposition, obeying Khomeinis orders, facilitating executions, and consolidating the power of the Islamic Republic, Raisi further proved his loyalty to the regime and climbed the political ladder through a series of promotions and appointments by the supreme leader. He was appointed to positions including the prosecutor of Tehran, chairman of the National Television Supervisory Council, head of the General Inspection Office, and attorney general.

When the so-called moderate President Hassan Rouhani assumed office, he was aware of Raisis deep connections to the regime and the supreme leader. Raisi was subsequently made the head of the Astan Quds Razavi foundation, which has billions of dollars in revenues and is exempt from paying taxes. Under Rouhanis presidency, other members of the Death Commission have been promoted, including Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the former representative of the Intelligence Ministry to the notorious Evin Prison, who was made justice minister.

Finally, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 2019 appointed Raisi as the head of the regimes judicial system. After his appointment, Raisi said out in a speech to the 23rd national assembly of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and officials: We will not cut the fingers of those who are corrupt; we will cut off their entire hand.

The US Treasury Department placed Raisi on its sanctions list in November 2019.

In a nutshell, having never held elected office, Raisi has made his way to the top through his use of an iron fist.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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The iron fist of Iran's next president - Arab News