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LONDON International energy companies including Total, Petronas and Inpex, have presented technical surveys for the development of the Azadegan oilfield, an Iranian oil official was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Tehran is looking to ramp up its crude output and with 37 billion barrels of oil, the Azadegan field is Irans largest, shared with its neighbor Iraq. It is located in southern Iran, 80 km west of the Khuzestan provincial city of Ahvaz.

The managing director of Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying that France's Total, Malaysia's Petronas, and Japans Inpex Corp. <1605.T, > have offered their surveys on the field.

Noureddin Shahnazizadeh added that some other companies like Royal Dutch Shell, Italy's oil and gas group Eni, and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) are also interested in the tender for development of the oilfield.

Iran's oil minister said in May that the international tender for the Azadegan oilfield was underway.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Alexander Smith)

MOSCOW The energy ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan did not discuss any adjustments to output levels Kazakhstan agreed to as part of a global oil output deal, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying on Saturday.

LONDON OPEC's battle against an oil glut is under threat as unsold crude from members Nigeria and Libya, which are exempt from a global production-cutting deal, is swamping the Atlantic Basin.

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Oil majors submit surveys to develop Iran's Azadegan - Reuters

The Jerusalem Post

Hamas chief Haniyeh to visit Iran The Jerusalem Post Hamas announced on Saturday that Hamas Politburo chairman, Ismail Haniyeh, will soon visit Iran and lead a delegation of senior Hamas leaders. Hamas' foreign relations chief, Osama Hamdan, announced that "the delegation, headed by Ismail Haniyeh, ... and more »

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Hamas chief Haniyeh to visit Iran - The Jerusalem Post

ANKARA When Islamic State called on members of Iran's Sunni Muslim minority in March to wage a religious war on their Shi'ite rulers, few people took the threat seriously. And yet within three months, militants have breached security at the very heart of the nation, killing at least 17 people.

This week's attacks at parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini have exposed shortcomings among the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which was supposed to be protecting these potent symbols of Iran's revolution.

They have also undermined Tehran's belief that by backing offensives against Islamic State across the Middle East, it can keep the militant Sunni group away from Iran.

Undaunted, officials say Iran will step up the strategy, which includes sending fighters to battle Islamic State in Syria and Iraq alongside allied Shi'ite militia groups.

And with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the IRGC blaming Saudi Arabia for the attacks, tensions are only likely to deepen between the two arch rivals competing for influence in an already chaotic region. Riyadh denies the charges, describing Tehran instead as "the number one state sponsor of terrorism".

Wednesday's killings in Tehran by Iranian members of Islamic State drew a shocked response similar to that in Western countries when they too have been attacked by locally-born jihadists. Now Iranians are worrying about how many others are out there, planning similar assaults.

One senior Iranian official told Reuters that Islamic State had established a network of support in the country, and suggested that members' motivation was as much political and economic as to do with Sunni radicals' belief that Shi'ites are infidels.

"Sunni extremism is spreading in Iran like many other countries. And not all of these young people who join extremist groups are necessarily religious people," said the official, who asked not to be named. "But the establishment is well aware of the problem and is trying to tackle it."

Most Iranian Sunnis, who form up to 10 percent of the population, reject Islamic State's ideology. But some young Sunnis seem to regard policies of Shi'ite-led Iran as oppressive at home or aggressive abroad, such as in Iraq and Syria, pushing more of them into the arms of jihadist groups.

Iran has been trying to stem the spread of radicalism into Sunni majority regions, which are usually less economically developed. Authorities said 1,500 young Iranians were prevented from joining Islamic State in 2016.

Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents.

Two Sunni groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been fighting the IRGC for over a decade. This has mostly been in remote areas but some say it was almost inevitable that violence would eventually spread to Tehran, as it did this week.

"It's not the attacks that are surprising. It's that Iran has been able to avoid one for so long. The attacks were a wake-up call for Iran's security apparatus," said senior Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group. "But so too will they probably serve as one for jihadists, who will be encouraged to exploit Iran's vulnerabilities."

"STRATEGIC FOLLY"

Since its creation shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the IRGC has functioned as Iran's most powerful internal and external security force, with a sophisticated intelligence and surveillance network.

The IRGC has vowed revenge on Islamic State - known by its opponents under the Arab acronym of Daesh - but a top security official said this won't be easy.

"The attacks showed the vulnerability of our security system, at the borders and within Iran," the official said, asking not to be named. However, he added: "Many planned attacks by Daesh have been foiled by our security forces in the past years. Many terrorist cells were dismantled. Our Guards have been vigilant."

Syrian rebels and Iraqi forces are closing in on Islamic State in those countries, and the official said the group appeared to have tried to strike back in Tehran.

"The attacks are the result of Daesh being weakened in the region. They blame Iran for that ... But Iran will not abandon its fight against terrorism," he added.

Open discussion of security vulnerabilities is taboo in Iran. However, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the idea that Syria and Iraq could form an effective first line of defense for Iran.

"Iranian officials have long justified their country's active military presence in Iraq and Syria as a way to keep the homeland safe," he said. "Wednesday's attacks expose the folly of that strategy."

SPIRALING TENSIONS

A senior official, who also asked not to be named, said the attacks would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".

Sanam Vakil, associate fellow with Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme, dismissed any expectation that Tehran might try to ease spiraling tensions with Riyadh. "If we are expecting to see any change in Iran's regional policy or a retreat in any way - that is not going to happen," she said.

Newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani has said the attacks will make Iran more united. Analysts, however, believe they will exacerbate domestic tensions between Rouhani, a pragmatist, and his rivals among hardline clergy and the IRGC.

They have repeatedly criticized Rouhani's attempts to improve relations with the outside world.

Rouhani has generally lost out to the hardliners, who through the IRGC's Al Quds force - expeditionary units which are fighting in Iraq and Syria as well as organizing Shi'ite allies - continue to call the shots. In the view of the hardliners' critics, they are helping to drive alienated Sunnis toward militant groups.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Samia Nakhoul and David Stamp)

BRASILIA Brazil's top electoral court dismissed a case on Friday that threatened to unseat President Michel Temer for alleged illegal campaign funding in the 2014 election, when he was the running mate of impeached President Dilma Rousseff.

SEOUL/WASHINGTON South Korea does not aim to change its agreement on the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system to protect against North Korea, in spite of a decision to delay its full installation, Seoul's top national security adviser said on Friday.

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Iran attacks expose security gaps, fuel regional tension - Reuters

The assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic States self-declared caliphate, is about to begin, and the end of ISIS is in sight. But so is the end of the tacit tactical alliance between Iran and the United States.

For a time, the old adversaries cooperated against their common enemy. The United States provided the Iraqi government and Iranian-backed Shiite militias with air support to help them seize control over the Iraqi cities of Tikrit in April 2015 and large parts of Mosul by February 2017. However, as these same Iraqi Shiite militias pursue fleeing ISIS elements to oil-rich Deir Ezzour in neighboring Syria, they confront United States special-operations forces and an American-backed coalition of Syrian rebel groups.

In Iraq, the U.S. is working with Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in a joint struggle against ISIS. In Syria however, the United States supports the moderate opposition to Bashar al-Assads regime, while Iran and its Shiite proxies are engaged in a relentless effort to eliminate opposition forces and secure the survival of the very same regime.

The Fatal Flaw in Trump's ISIS Plan

On Tuesday, June 6, U.S.-led coalition fighter jets bombed Syrian government soldiers and, according to some reports, Shiite Iraqi militia members in the al-Tanf region in southeastern Homs province, where since May 2015 a contingent of U.S. troops has been training Syrian opposition forces. It was the second time in less than a month that coalition forces had attacked Syrian regime forces and their allies as they headed toward the al-Tanf garrison. On May 18, coalition planes pounded a convoy headed toward al-Tanf.

The scene is set for a zero-sum game: Iran and its allied Shiite militias want the area to establish an overland corridor to the Syrian-Israeli border, the Mediterranean, and Lebanon. In the first year of the Syrian Civil War, the late Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani likened such an overland corridor to a string of pearls [reshteh-ye morvarid] that would connect Iran with its regional allies all the way from western Afghanistan to Lebanon, allowing Tehran to consolidate its sphere of influence across the Levant and facilitate arms shipments to Hezbollah. The American strategy is not clear, but the United States needs to control the area to cut Irans expansionism, which is causing alarm among Washingtons key Arab allies and Israel. Unrestricted Iranian access to Lebanese Hezbollah is not only likely to further strengthen the organization, but risks emboldening the group to provoke another war with Israel.

Iran and its Shiite coalition, which has sacrificed blood and treasure to maintain control over Syria, is not likely to restrain itself in the endgame against ISIS. Four hundred and ninety Iranians, 1,063 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, 653 Afghans, 144 Pakistanis, and at least 94 Iraqi Shia, by my count, have sacrificed their lives in Syria, and they did not do so just to back off at the last moment. Nor is the Trump administration in a position to back off; it has promised Americas Sunni allies it will contain and curtail Irans power.

Potential for escalation of the conflict between Tehran and Washington is very real. The brazen acts of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Forcewhich is tasked with exporting Irans revolution beyond Irans bordersand attempts at testing or tarnishing American power and prestige, risk provoking heavy-handed responses. In the Persian Gulf and Shat al-Arab waterway, for example, the IRGC Navy engages in systematic provocations against the Americas Fifth Fleet, and has previously taken British and American sailors as prisoners of warreleasing them only after extensive use of their photos in humiliating positions in government-controlled media. There are still no reports of Iranian casualties among those killed in Americas recent bombardments of Syrian government and allied Shiite convoys headed to Syria. But the U.S. military response is not likely to deter the IRGC, and it is doubtful if the IRGC leadership would have any other choice but responding in kind in an attempt to avoid losing face in front of the Iranian public.

Such dynamics are not only likely to escalate tensions between Iran and the United States, but could also fuel the vicious cycle of violence for which Tehran is ill-prepared.

There are, however, also a few mitigating factors. Even after the implosion of the Islamic State and its self-proclaimed caliphate, disgruntled Sunnis in Iraq and Syria are likely to rebel against Iran and its Shiite proxies. Regional Sunni powers are just as likely to come to their aid in an attempt to reestablish the regional balance of power. Given such prospects, Tehran is not likely to want an all-out war against Washington. The question is whether Tehrans leadershipor Washingtonscan prevent it.

More here:
America and Iran Hurtle Toward Confrontation in Syria - The Atlantic

With Adam Rawnsley

Shooting war. Is this what the start of a war looks like? Near At Tanf, two strikes destroyed two tactical vehicles and a UAS. The line comes from the tally of airstrikes the U.S. Central Command emails to reporters each morning, blandly listing each days strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria. Only in Fridays note, the targets were Iranian-backed Shiite militias fighting in support of the regime of Syrias Bashar al Assad.

An American F-15 shot down a pro-regime drone that dropped a munition on U.S.-backed forces near the U.S. garrison at al Tanf on Thursday, narrowly missing the patrol which was accompanied by U.S. forces. The armed drone, which was likely an Iranian-made Shahed-129, was wiped out only hours after other U.S. jets bombed two vehicles which had strayed too close to the base. The Daily Beast has a good run down on the Iranian drone, and its operations in Syria.

New threat for U.S. troops in Syria. The attack, which U.S. military officials say caused no casualties or damage to equipment, was the first time U.S.-backed forces had been targeted by a drone in Syria, and indicates that the Bashar al Assad regime and his Iranian backers are willing to target American and coalition troops directly, FPs Paul McLeary writes. It also came just after American warplanes struck Shiite militias, backed by Iran, for the third time in as many weeks near the U.S. garrison at al Tanf.

A U.S. Defense official said Thursday the drone strike came outside of a 55-mile buffer zone the U.S. enforces around al Tanf, but that U.S.-backed forces, along with their American and international advisors, regularly patrol outside of the area. More here from FPs Dan De Luce and Paul McLeary on where this emerging conflict between Washington and Tehran in Syria might be headed.

More trouble for Qatar. Arab countries put 12 organizations and 59 people on a terror sanctions list early Friday they described as being associated with Qatar, the AP reports Friday morning, the latest in a growing diplomatic dispute thats seen the energy rich nation isolated by Saudi Arabia and others. As of Thursday, Pentagon officials were telling SitRep that operations at the massive Al Udeid air base in Qatar the operational hub of the war in Iraq and Syria were proceeding as normal, though there were some worries about keeping the 11,000 troops on the base supplied in the long term if the blockade by Gulf countries continues.

The Wall Street Journal notes, Qatar may be tiny, but thats where all the major fault lines in the Middle East are converging these days. The sudden cutoff of ties with Qatar by several Saudi-led Arab states has already turned into a proxy fight between supporters and opponents of political Islam and between partners and enemies of Iran.

Its awful lonely out there on the Qatar Peninsula, according to a new batch of satellite imagery posted by Bellingcat. The open source investigative outlet published photos showing that the Saudis have completely cut off vehicle traffic to Qatars As Salwa border crossing. Qatar is dependent on goods delivered across its land border with Saudi Arabia for much of its imports.

Kurds going for it. Iraqi Kurds have finally set a date for their long-discussed referendum on independence from the rest of Iraq, with the Kurdistan Regional Government calling for a vote on Sept. 25, FPs Keith Johnson and Emily Tamkin write.

The decision, announced by KRG president Masoud Barzani on Twitter, is sure to spark a showdown with Baghdad, which has for years sought to keep the restive Kurds inside a barely functioning Iraqi state. The U.S. State Department says it is concerned the referendum will distract Baghdad from the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey, unsurprisingly, thinks the move is a terrible mistake.

ISIS has killed hundreds in Mosul. Meanwhile, Islamic State fighters have shot and killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul over the past two weeks, as the Iraqi army tightens the circle around the last remaining holdouts the United Nations said on Thursday. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 civilians remain trapped by the fighters in their dwindling pocket of control in the western half of Mosul.

Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Arms bazaar. Want to know whats in the reportedly $110 billion arms package the U.S. just offered to the Saudis? Defense News got it hands on a list of the specific items involved, which includes seven THAAD batteries, Patriot anti-missile systems, surveillance planes and fighter jets, as well as tens of thousands of munitions and other assorted arms. While the Trump administration has touted the $110 billion figure, theres still plenty of hurdles before that figure becomes a reality. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia still need to sign letters of agreement for a number of systems and both the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and Congress need to sign off on the sales. Congressional approval could be especially tricky given an emerging opposition to Saudi arms sales in the Senate.

Hack the Casbah. FPs Emily Tamkin reports that Qatars state-supported Al Jazeera news outlet is now under attack online. Al Jazeera officials say the entire Doha-based network is suffering from constant hacking attempts. The statement comes amidst a squabble between Qatar and its Sunni Gulf neighbors over Dohas alleged support of militant groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran. The rift has been widened by another incident of cyber intrigue involving what Qatar and the FBI say was the hack into the state-run Qatar News Agency. Officials say an op-ed purportedly written by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani expressing fondness for Iran and Israel was a fake planted by hackers.

For hire. The New York Times also gets a scoop that the culprits responsible for posting that allegedly fake article were Russian mercenary hackers, according to the FBI. Nor are the Qataris the only Gulf country on the receiving end of hackers for hire. One group of cybersecurity researchers is set to publish a report claiming that the hackers responsible for stealing and publishing emails from the Emirati ambassador to the U.S. were part of a mercenary group dubbed Bahamut.

Busted. The Department of Justice announced the arrest of two alleged Hezbollah operatives inside the U.S., charging the men with training with the U.S.-designated terrorist group and scouting out potential American and Israeli targets inside the U.S. and Panama. Prosecutors say Samer El Debek and Ali Kourani, both naturalized U.S. citizens, received military training from Hezbollah in Lebanon, including a course in manufacturing improvised explosive devices for El Debek. Kourani is accused of scouting targets for Hezbollah in New York and searching for weapons suppliers for the group. El Debek allegedly surveilled the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Panama for Hezbollah and helped the group clean out a bomb factory in Thailand after operatives there fell under surveillance.

Shots fired. Russian President Vladimir Putin took aim at Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his greatest nemesis in the U.S. Congress, on Thursday. In an interview with director and fan Oliver Stone, Putin admitted a grudging fondness for McCain to a certain extent on account of his patriotism. But Putin called out the Arizona senator for liv[ing] in the Old World, saying that his hardline stance on Russia fails to take into account the importance of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia on issues ranging from terrorism, global poverty, and nuclear weapons.

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force

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SitRep: US and Iran Trade Shots in Syria; Qatar Blockade Continues; ISIS Slaughtering Civilians in Mosul - Foreign Policy (blog)