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Iran expects around US$50 billion worth of oil contracts to launch their operational phases next year, according to Fardad Daliri, director of investment at the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization (IDRO) of Iran.

The Islamic Republic is inviting local and foreign companies to take part in oilfield development projects that Iran wants to launch soon, Daliri said at an international exhibition in Tehran, as reported by Trend news agency.

We are hopeful to be able to sign huge oil deals on the development of shared oil fields both on and offshore, Trend quoted Daliri as saying.

Iran is finalizing talks and expects to soon sign deals with major international companies, including Frances Total, Denmarks Maersk, Malaysias Petronas, Indonesias Pertamina, and Russias Lukoil, the official said.

Totalthe first oil major to return to looking at investing in Iranis waiting for an extension of the waiver on U.S. sanctions against Iran before it makes the final decision on a US$2.2-billioninvestment in a gas project in the country, according to Totals chief executive Patrick Pouyanne.

OPECs no.3 producer, Iran, which is currently pumping just below 3.8 million bpd of crude oil, wants to increase its production to 5 million bpd by 2021.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Irans Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said that the re-election of reformist President Hassan Rouhani last week was an important step toward signing big deals with big international companies.

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One important step was the election, because in this election Iranian people said 'yes' to positive interaction with the world, the minister noted.

Zanganeh reiterated Irans long-term plan to lift the countrys production capacity to 5 million bpd in the next five years, thanks to new projects developed together with international companies.

Iran hopes to sign this year oil development contracts with Total, Lukoil, and Maersk, and possibly Pertamina, Zanganeh told Reuters.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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McClatchy Washington Bureau

Trump's move to isolate Iran could further strain Sunni-Shiite relations in Mideast McClatchy Washington Bureau While President Donald Trump's recent visit to Saudi Arabia preached partnership with Muslim leaders to end terrorism, critics say his alignment with one side of the Middle East's sectarian divide could do more harm than good. Trump's criticizing of ... and more »

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Trump's move to isolate Iran could further strain Sunni-Shiite relations in Mideast - McClatchy Washington Bureau

Irans President Hassan Rouhani won re-election by a wide margin Saturday, giving the moderate cleric a second four-year term.

The 68-year-old incumbent secured a commanding lead of 57 percent. His nearest rival in the four-man race was hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, who secured 38 percent of the vote.

Rouhani won the presidential election back in 2013 with only 51 percent of the vote.

As Rouhani appeared close to victory, some female drivers held out the V for victory sign and flashed their car lights on highways in Tehran's affluent north.

"We made the victory again. We sent back Raisi to Mashhad," his conservative hometown in northeastern Iran, said Narges, a 43 year-old beauty salon owner, who declined to give her full name. She said she spent more than three hours outside waiting to vote, "but it was worth it."

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced the vote tallies in a televised news conference, based on a count of more than 99 percent of the ballots. He said Rouhani garnered 23.5 million votes out of 41.2 million ballots cast. Iran has 56.4 million eligible voters.

Iran's president is the second-most powerful figure within Iran's political system. He is subordinate to the supreme leader, who is chosen by a clerical panel and has the ultimate say over all matters of state.

Election officials repeatedly extended voting hours until midnight to accommodate long lines of voters, some of whom said they waited hours to cast their ballots. Analysts have said a higher turnout would likely benefit Rouhani.

Friday's vote was largely a referendum on Rouhani's more moderate political policies, which paved the way for the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that won Iran relief from some sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Rouhani has come to embody more liberal and reform-minded Iranians' hopes for greater freedoms and openness at home, and better relations with the outside world.

Raisi, his nearest challenger, is close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who stopped short of endorsing anyone in the election. Raisi ran a populist campaign, vowing to fight corruption and fix the economy while boosting welfare payments to the poor.

The two other candidates left in the race, Mostafa Mirsalim, a former culture minister, and Mostafa Hashemitaba, a pro-reform figure who previously ran for president in 2001, respectively have 478,000 and 215,000 votes each.

Hashemitaba was among the first to predict an outright win for Rouhani as he offered his congratulations Saturday morning.

"Rouhani will apply his ever-increasing efforts for the dignity of Iran" in his next term, the reformist said.

The Tehran Stock Exchange rallied after the election results came out, extending a recent winning streak to close nearly 1 percent higher at its highest level in three months.

Although considered a moderate by Iranian standards, Rouhani was nonetheless the favorite pick for those seeking more liberal reforms in the conservative Islamic Republic.

He appeared to embrace a more reform-minded role during the campaign as he openly criticized hard-liners and Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force involved in the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants in neighboring Iraq.

That gave hope to his supporters, who during recent campaign rallies called for the release of two reformist leaders of the 2009 Green Movement who remain under house arrest. The two figures, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, both endorsed Raisi, as did Mohammad Khatami, another reformist who served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005.

Iran has no credible political polling to serve as harder metrics for the street buzz around candidates, who need more than 50 percent of the vote to seal victory and avoid a runoff. But what scant data that was available before the vote showed Rouhani in the lead.

The position of president is a powerful post. He oversees a vast state bureaucracy employing more than 2 million people, is charged with naming Cabinet members and other officials to key posts, and plays a significant role in shaping both domestic and foreign policy.

All candidates for elected office must be vetted, a process that excludes anyone calling for radical change, along with most reformists. No woman has ever been approved to run for president.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Continued here:
Iran's incumbent president Rouhani wins second term | Fox News

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Iranian | Proud to be.

David A. Andelman, member of the board of contributors of USA Today, is the author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today." He formerly served as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. This opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN)At first glance, it appears that there are only two clear paths that the US can take when dealing with the Middle East: the Sunni path of Saudi Arabia and the bulk of its Gulf allies, on the one hand; or the Shiite path represented by Iran.

There is the path of dictators -- like Egypt's autocratic Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the blinkered and aging royal family of Saudi Arabia, and the corrupt and helpless rulers of Iraq -- all Sunnis.

By contrast, there is the young and desperately eager majority of Iranians, all Shiites, seeking to drag their nation out from under the yoke of a medieval clerical oppression.

The correct, if difficult, third path for America is to straddle between Sunni and Shiite. But going on the evidence of Trump's first overseas trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel -- both firm enemies of Iran and critical of the Obama administration's perceived warmth towards Iran -- this is a path that the President seems determined to ignore.

Of course, while that new road can be paved with good intentions, we know where such paths can lead. Still, it is of vital importance that we give these youths a chance to explore it.

What incentive is there for Iran to move toward peace, toward the West and toward the US if we become known not as peacemakers but simply arms merchants to Iran's sworn Sunni enemies in Saudi Arabia?

Trump visits Saudi Arabia on first trip 06:17

It was decidedly not a gesture to the reality that this is precisely what these very Iranian people voted for two days earlier.

Yet under the leadership of the blinkered Trump administration and the Sunni dictators to which it has hitched America's wagons, these forces of potential progress in Iran are being given few choices but to look elsewhere for weapons to defend their Shiite faith and their nation against the weapons being stockpiled by their Sunni enemies.

But there is more to the new era that may mark the path of Iran. If, as now appears increasingly likely following the weekend's events in Riyadh, the Sunni-Shiite divide continues to widen, it will have unfortunate consequences for the war on terrorism that President Trump seems so intent to pursue in short-sighted alliance with questionable partners.

For while the battle against ISIS is quite clearly a battle -- as President Trump has expressed it -- between good and evil, it is also a conflict that has gone on for centuries between Sunni and Shiite.

Trump and his advisers seem to be acting on the ancient pronouncement that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They simply have been unable or unwilling to identify who could be our real and true enemies, and who our long-term friends.

Iran, apparently, no matter how vocally its people scream for change, will continue to find only deaf ears from Washington to Riyadh.

Excerpt from:
Trump's anti-Iran aggression couldn't come at a worse time ...