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Iran has agreed to design and build industrial townships in a number of provinces in Iraq. The deal will help unlock investment from within the war-torn country, Irans Minister of Industries, Mining and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said during a visit to Baghdad on February 14, Fars News Agency reported. The minister said Iran would begin with several pilot projects, for which it would also supply industrial equipment and investment. Welcoming the news, his Iraqi counterpart, Mohammad Shiya al-Sudani, said the construction of industrial townships was among the countrys priorities. Given Irans experiences in the construction of such townships, Iraq is willing to cooperate with Iran in this field, he said. Building industrial townships to attract investment in manufacturing is a popular strategy pursued by many developing countries. Iran has already built 750 such townships and estimates that they host 40,000 factories and plants, according to Global Construction Review. India is also relying on such projects to industrialize while avoiding problems with setting up factories in urban centers. Industrial townships also help attract foreign investment. At the end of 2015, Japan announced plans to double its investment in India by setting up 11 industrial townships, each with around 30 Japanese factories, all of which are eligible for special tax incentives.

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Iran to Build Industrial Townships in Iraq - Financial Tribune

Tony Blair says it is his mission to encourage British people to "rise up" and challenge Brexit.

He believes that over time, enough people will consider that they have made a mistake voting to leave the EU.

And when they do, "it is their right to change their mind".

Like when people changed their mind about the war in Iraq. When people realised, contrary to what they were told, that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Then opinion changed.

Unsurprisingly, Tony Blair didn't use this analogy, but, if you want to make the point it is quite a good one.

According to YouGov polls from March to December in 2003 - on average 54% of people backed the war in Iraq - so more than those who supported Brexit.

A few years later people didn't just change their minds - many denied ever supporting it. A study in 2015 found only 37% remember ever agreeing with the war.

Could this turnaround happen with Brexit? Could people reverse their decision? Might people decide, as many did with the war, that they have been lied to?

I may have just demonstrated why Tony Blair is probably the wrong person to lead the counter-revolution.

However, he also stands head and shoulders above most other politicians when it comes to making a case.

It's clear that the former prime minister feels there is a gaping gap in politics where pro-EU politicians have been left impotent by the referendum result.

That even though Remain supporters Theresa May and Philip Hammond hold the seat of power in Downing Street, "they're not driving this bus. They're being driven," he said.

He points to a "jumble of contradictions" between what leading politicians said during the campaign about the consequences of Brexit and what they are saying now.

He cites the Chancellor, who said leaving the single market would be "catastrophic" but is now "very optimistic".

He also accuses Leave figurehead Boris Johnson of flip-flopping.

Mr Blair said: "Two years ago the Foreign Secretary was emphatically in favour of the single market. Now ditching it is 'brilliant'."

The former PM is clearly furious that his own party has failed to challenge the Conservatives.

He said: "The debilitation of the Labour Party is the facilitator of Brexit. I hate to say that, but it is true."

This cuts to the heart of his frustration. What happened, albeit on David Cameron's watch, might not have happened if a progressive EU enthusiast had been leading Labour.

And now he can see his party waving through what Blair describes as a "Brexit at all costs". He sees Corbyn as the ultimate pacifist to the Conservative thrust.

Many will see Blair's intervention as an arrogant rant, by an out-of-touch senior member of the liberal elite.

Others might regard it as a rallying call. But what is Blair hoping to achieve?

Recently 47 Labour MPs defied Corbyn's three-line whip to support the triggering of Article 50, and shadow cabinet ministers resigned. It could be he senses a weakening in Corbyn's position.

His call was to "build a movement which stretches across party lines", and he wants to devise new ways of getting the pro-EU message out. But he also wants to splinter Corbyn's support.

Meanwhile, if enough people are persuaded that Brexit wasn't what they thought it was Blair doesn't rule out a second referendum.

But part of this is about reminding people about his vision of the Labour Party.

He still wants a party that embraces the advantages of globalisation and clings on to Europe as hard as it can.

While this message seems to have lost its appeal in many Labour heartlands, in Blair's eyes the counter revolution against Brexit ultimately has to come from the Labour Party.

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Blair's anti-Brexit mission evokes memories of Iraq war - Sky News

Iraq's Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi talks to journalists during a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, Austria, November 30, 2016. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader -

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq plans to acquire a "large fleet" of oil tankers to transport the OPEC nation's crude to global markets, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said in a statement on Friday.

The nation's tanker fleet was largely destroyed during the U.S.-led offensive to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, according to the state-run Iraqi Oil Tankers Company's website. The company owned as many as 24 tankers in the 1980s.

"The ministry is keen to restructure the company and develop its operations by building and buying a large fleet of tankers," Luaibi told the company's management, according to the statement.

Iraq is OPEC's second-largest producer, after Saudi Arabia.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Adrian Croft)

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Iraq plans to acquire 'large fleet' of oil tankers - Yahoo Finance

The Islamic State terror network claimed responsibility for two bombings that each killed dozens of people Thursday -- one at a shrine in Pakistan and one at an auto dealership in Iraq.

ISIS USING KIDNAPPED YAZIDI CHILDREN IN SUICIDE MISSIONS

The suicide bomber at the world-famous shrine in southern Pakistan killed at least 75 people and wounding more than 200 others, according to health officials. They said the dead included 20 women and nine children.

Also Thursday, a car bombexploded in Baghdad's southwestern al-Bayaa neighborhood shortly before sunset, killing at least 55 people and wounding more than 60 others, according to Iraq's Interior Ministry. It was the third blast to hit the Iraqi capital in three days,the BBC reported.

The terror group claimed the bombings through its Amaq media agency.

SPECIAL OPS CHIEF: TROOPS HAVE KILLED 60,000 ISIS MILITANTS THE PAST TWO YEARS

ISIS has carried out near-daily attacks in Baghdad even as U.S.-backed Iraqi troops regain ground from the terror group. The military has engaged in an intense operation to regain the ISIS hub of Mosul in northern Iraq since October.

In Pakistan, the attacker walked through a gold plated door and entered the main hall of the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, named after the famous Sufi saint buried there, in the town of Sehwan in the southern Sindh province. Then, security officials said he detonated his suicide jacket as hundreds of worshippers were performing their weekly mystical dance -- called Dhamal.

In a strongly-worded statement, Pakistan's army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa said "each drop of nation's blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately. No more restraint for anyone."State-run Pakistan Television quoted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as saying the country's military and other security forces would use all their resources to track down and arrest the culprits.

"I saw bodies everywhere. I saw bodies of women and children,"Raja Somro, who was inside the shrine at the time of the attack, told a local TV network.

The military reported it was dispatching troops to contribute to the relief effort.

The U.S. condemned the Baghdad attack. "These acts of mass murder are yet another example of ISISs utter contempt for human life and its efforts to sow discord and division among the Iraqi people. Our partnership with the Iraqi Security Forces, who serve on the front-lines of this global fight, remains steadfast and unwavering," State Dept.spokesman Mark Toner responded.

ISIS claimed the Baghdad attack targeted Shiites. Earlier, a police officer and medical official told The Associated Press the bombing targeted automobile agents and dealers.

Another four attacks in and around the Iraqi capital on Thursday killed eight people and wounded around 30, police and medical officials said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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ISIS bombings kill dozens in Iraq and Pakistan - Fox News

The old expression, to the victor belong the spoilsyou remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasnt a fan of Iraq. I didnt want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrongwe should have kept the oil.

Those were President Trumps comments at the CIA the day after his inauguration in January. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. should have taken Iraqs oil, an argument that he revisited as recently as last week. Weve spent $6 trillionin the Middle East, President Trump said during a meeting with airline executives at the White House on February 9. Weve got nothing. Weve got nothing. We never even kept a small, even a tiny oil well. Not one little oil well. I said, Keep the oil.

The notion that the U.S. military should have taken Iraqs oil, it should be said at the outset, is flatly illegal. "What Trump seems to be advocating here would be a fundamental violation of international law embodied in numerous international agreements and in recognized principles of customary international law," Anthony Clark Arend, a Georgetown University professor of government and foreign service, told PolitiFact last year.

It would also stretch the imagination to envision how such a strategy would play out in reality. Iraqs oil sector is made up of a mix of state-owned interests and private ones. Most of the investment going into Iraqs enormous southern oil fields come from international companies, such as BP, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, CNPC and Lukoil. Kurdish oil fields in the north are also run mostly by international companies. It is not clear what taking the oil really looks like.

Ive always thought that was beyond stupid. In other words, I dont even know what it means, John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA under the Clinton and Bush administrations, told the New Yorker Radio Hour last week. Try and operationalize that. Does that mean sending troops to surround oil wells while you pump it out, then transport it out of the country? Or does it mean something else? I have no idea what hes talking about. So I assume it wont happen. So Im not worried about it.

On top of that, taking Iraqs oil, however that played out, would be a political nightmare. While some might dismiss the comments as just talk, even the suggestion of taking Iraqs oil is already having a negative effect. The comments, combined with the travel ban that the Trump administration ordered on seven majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, has sparked a backlash against the U.S. in Iraq.

The Iraqi public and Iraqi members of parliament are pressuring Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to scale back its cooperation with the U.S. government and military, which could jeopardize the long-term presence of American troops in Iraq. This is potentially an enormous and underreported development given that it is a top priority of the U.S. government to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In fact, U.S. troops have been cooperating with Iraqi forces for months on a major campaign to retake Mosul, a mission that is set to ramp up again in the near future to take the western portion of the city.

"Trump embarrassed al-Abadi," Saad al-Mutalabi, a lawmaker and ally of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP. "There will be a general consensus that Americans should not stay in Iraq after Mosul, after the statements and the executive order from Trump," he said. "We believed that we had a strategic agreement with the U.S."

A narrowing of the U.S. presence in Iraq would serve to benefit Iran, dealing another blow to the Trump administration. And speaking of Iran, Shiite militias inside Iraq told the AP that they would target U.S. interests if the U.S. went after Iran, their benefactor.

President Trumps reckless comments about taking Iraqs oil, in other words, are undermining multiple U.S. strategic goals all at once. In the minds of a lot of Iraqis, they also confirm the worst: that the 2003 U.S. invasion was all about access to Iraqs oil, something top American officials have always denied.

The stakes are high, with Iraq fighting a war against ISIS while trying to revive its oil sector. Oil revenues account for 93 percent of Iraqs revenue, and the country is struggling under the weight of an expensive war and low oil prices. Iraq needs its oil to rebuild, and any effort to squeeze the government by the U.S. would be counterproductive to Iraqs well-being, to say the least. President Trumps shoot from the hip style has earned him some degree of domestic support, but he is in the process of needlessly burning bridges with some of the countries that he will need the most.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

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Trump Burning Bridges In Iraq Over Take The Oil Comments - Yahoo Finance