Latest news with #Iraq
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Inside the Trading Desks that Surfed 12 Days of Oil Market Mayhem
Traders watched with alarm as US jets bombed a major Middle Eastern oil producer. An initial surge in the price of crude turned into a rout as soon as they realized that oil flows would continue unaffected. The year was 1991, and the US bombing campaign was against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In just one night, prices collapsed by 30%.
Khaleej Times
3 hours ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
UAE travel: Emirates extends cancellation of flights to and from Tehran until July 5
Dubai's flagship carrier Emirates on Saturday said its flights to and from Tehran, Iran, will remain suspended till July 5, 2025. The decision comes as Iran's airspace remains closed for airlines despite the Israel-Iran ceasefire that followed a 12-day conflict between the two countries. UAE airlines have mostly resumed their operation as scheduled prior to the air war. Flightradar24 said: 'flight routes are returning to near-normal in the Middle East' after bombs and missiles". Data showed that airlines are also avoiding Syrian airspace due to geopolitical tension in the region. Emirates, the Dubai-based carrier and the world's largest international airline, said operations to Baghdad will recommence on Tuesday, July 1, 2025, and Basra on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Customers connecting through Dubai to Iraq will be accepted for travel at their point of origin. It added that customers connecting through Dubai with final destinations in Iran will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin until further notice. 'Customers impacted by flight cancellations must contact their travel agency for rebooking,' it said. 'The safety of our passengers, employees and operations will always be our top priority,' it said.
South China Morning Post
11 hours ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
From Iraq to Iran: the US quest for Israeli military dominance
As Israeli jets and American bombers streaked across Iranian skies earlier this month, the world watched a familiar game plan unfold – one that had its origins in secret meetings, veiled ambitions and the relentless logic of regional dominance that has haunted the Middle East for generations. The process began decades earlier, in the smoke of American air strikes on Iraq and the calculations of US policymakers determined to keep Israel unrivalled. It was the late 1990s when a small, bipartisan delegation of senior US senators touched down in the United Arab Emirates . Their visit coincided with the American strikes, part of a legacy of US intervention in the Gulf that had left the region in a state of perpetual unease since the guns of Operation Desert Storm fell silent in Kuwait at the start of the decade. One ranking Emirati official, exasperated by the endless cycle of violence, posed the question that had been whispered in the corridors of power throughout the Gulf: why didn't Washington simply topple Saddam Hussein and be done with it? A US senator, unmoved by the query, offered a response with chilling candour. The objective, he told the official, was not regime change, but rather to 'reduce any regional state on a military and technological par with Israel to a pre-industrial society'. The official later shared that exchange with this reporter. A US F-18 fighter jet flies over gas flares at an oil well in northern Kuwait in 1995. Photo: AFP Such an agenda – once the preserve of neoconservative ideologues – soon became official US policy in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Russia Today
a day ago
- Business
- Russia Today
Russia and Iran resume direct flights
Russia and Iran have resumed direct flights following a temporary flight ban imposed by Moscow due to the conflict between Israel and Iran. Flights have also been resumed between Russia and Iraq and Jordan. Major global carriers, including Lufthansa, Emirates, and Air France-KLM, also rerouted or canceled flights to avoid the airspaces of Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Iraq. Some 650 flights were scrapped during the period of hostilities between Israel and Iran, according to Eurocontrol, a pan-European air traffic organization. In a statement on Friday, Russia's civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said it had lifted the ban on flights over Iran, Iraq, and Jordan following a 'continuous analysis' of the risks to civil aviation in the region. 'Rosaviatsia continues to monitor the situation in the Middle East,' the agency said. 'If there are any significant changes, airlines will be promptly informed.' The first post-ban arrival from Iran touched down at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on Friday. The Mahan Air flight had departed from the northeastern city of Mashhad. A return flight left at noon. Russian flagship carrier Aeroflot has also resumed sales of tickets to Tehran. The first flight is scheduled for July 4. The route will operate three times a week. Israel launched a series of airstrikes on June 13 targeting Iranian military and nuclear sites, as well as senior commanders and nuclear scientists, in what it described as a mission to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The US later joined Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities. Iran, which denies that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, condemned what it called unprovoked attacks and retaliated by launching ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones at Israeli cities. A US-brokered ceasefire has since come into effect and has so far held, with both sides claiming victory.
Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Times
By Ali Khamenei's logic, he did beat the US — by surviving
As American and British troops tore through Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein's information minister briefly became a celebrity for his loyal, if increasingly unhinged, optimism. 'Baghdad Bob', as Muhammad Saeed Al-Sahhaf was nicknamed by the press corps, was still vividly describing the overwhelming defeats Iraqi troops were inflicting on the enemy even as American tanks rolled into the city. It is easy to see statements like that on Thursday of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a similar light. • Iran intel leak: who is the 'low-level loser' who exposed Trump? In his first public appearance since the strikes, he claimed victory, despite the undoubted destruction of at least large parts of his nuclear programme. 'The Islamic Republic won, and in retaliation dealt a severe slap to the face of America,' he said. The 'retaliation' was a volley of missiles fired at America's Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, none of which hit their target thanks to the United States' Patriot interceptors. His declared refusal to 'surrender' to Trump also looks unwise. Israel destroyed all Iran's own aerial defence systems last year, leaving it unable to protect itself should attacks resume one day. However, the US invasion of Iraq, initially so successful, turned into a much longer and grimmer 'asymmetric' war. It was Khamenei's lieutenants who funded and organised many of the Iraqi militias that wreaked such devastating harm on US and British troops with their roadside bombs and ambushes over the coming years. • 'If the bombing failed, people died for nothing' So there is also an asymmetric aspect to Khamenei's propaganda. Of course, there is no doubt that he hoped that Iran's own defence forces, and those of the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon last year, would have put up more severe resistance to Israel than they did. However, Khamenei and Hezbollah are still there, just as Hamas is still operational in Gaza, despite the much longer, bloodier and more intense war that Israel has waged there. The victory Khamenei really seeks is the survival of his regime and its ideology of 'resistance' against Israel. Whether or not he or his successors actually one day give the order to build a nuclear weapon, the nuclear programme was always a symbol of that resistance. But it was not the only one. If he now agrees to give it up for the sake of his long-suffering people and their desire for a revived economy, he will certainly no longer be able to claim to have won the war. But neither the US nor Israel has carried out their threats to kill him, while on Thursday his defence minister was consulting his Russian and Chinese counterparts on his next steps, and he clearly feels there is still fight in his 86-year-old body. That, for him, may be victory enough.
