Iran, Venezuela, Syria Build New Refinery In Homs

Ketab-e Dey and Ketab-e Khaneh announced on their Instagram page that they would be closed "until further notice." When questioned by users about the reason for the closure, the management confirmed, "We were sealed [shut down by the regime]”.

While the store managers refrained from providing detailed explanations, reports suggest the shutdown of the bookstores is part of an ongoing effort to enforce hijab rules in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

Meanwhile, the Qom Prosecutor's Office reported the closure of a cinema in the religious city, alleging "indecent advertising related to the screening of a foreign film." They claimed that the film's horror genre and introduction of supernatural elements were somehow linked to "Satanism."

While the protest movement in Iran over the past year, sparked by the tragic death of Mahsa Amini while in custody, didn't lead to the overthrow of the regime, it did manage to significantly challenge one of its core principles, mandatory hijab.

As women increasingly defy the mandatory headscarf and venture out, the regime intensifies its efforts to suppress social activities, punishing the population as it faces challenges in enforcing hijab rules amid growing public resistance.

In recent months, numerous shops, restaurants, cafes and malls where Iranian women continue to disregard the regime's mandatory hijab have been shut down across Iran, with many women arrested in the process.

This month, new laws were passed to introduce even harsher punishments for failure to comply with hijab laws.

Closing cafes and coffee shops, which are very popular with students and other young people, is apparently part of the larger plans of the ruling hardliners to shut down all such establishments as symbols of “corruptive western culture”.

In the past two years many cafes and coffee shops have been forced to shut down across the country, often on various charges including “failure to enforce the hijab” or for live music.

In a letter to the higher education minister apparently leaked on social media by hackers who targeted the ministry earlier this week, the university’s chancellor, Seyed Mohammad Moghimi, has boasted that all but one of the cafes around the university campus have been closed “with the help of all of the university’s departments” in the past eighteen months.

Authorities have not confirmed or denied the authenticity of the letter which suggests that the university owns the land on which the buildings of the cafes stand and offers cooperation in shutting down even those built on land not owned by the university.

Many social media users are baffled that the chancellor of the country’s biggest and oldest university should be so concerned about the existence of cafes around the university campus.

“I think shutting down cafes is useless. Shut down the university to find relief from your concerns,” a comment on X said while someone else opined that the authorities are concerned about these cafes because they are a place for students to gather freely. “I forgot the parks around the university. You should turn them into parking lots, too,” another tweet said.

Meanwhile, on Saturday Defa Press, the news agency of Iran's Armed Forces, alleged that some cafes had been “centers for networking against national security”.

The article in Defa Press, used complex syllogism to prove its allegation and claimed that half of the 150 cafes in the central areas of the capital Tehran, where the said university campus is also located, had been partially funded by “European embassies, particularly the one involved in last year’s riots” before shutting down.

Iranian authorities and hardline media always refer to last year’s nationwide protests during which over 500 protesters were killed as “riots” and “sedition” and blame western powers of stirring them up to weaken the Islamic Republic and destroy it.

“Over 50 percent of these [cafes] were not economically viable but they continued to operate because all of them received funding from the same source,” Defa Press wrote.

Defa Press claimed that the cafes were helped by these western powers because they were places for young gamers to convene and network, and argued that new technologies, including those employed by these gamers, could be used against the Islamic Republic’s national security without elaborating on the connection.

Referring to Tehran University Chancellor’s letter, writer and journalist Abdoljavad Mousavi in a commentary for the reformist Ham-Mihan newspaper on Tuesday strongly criticized the efforts for Islamizing the “appearance” of the Iranian society including elimination of everything that looks influenced by the western culture.

Comparing the mindset of the Iranian hardliners to the Taliban, Mousavi warned that shutting down cafes -- like banning video players in the 1980s, satellite TV in the 90s and internet filtering after 2002-- would only encourage “underground cafes” and draw more people to these underground establishments. “Stop acting with [fake] modestly, do what your brothers [in Afghanistan] did. Ban women from leaving their homes. Shut down the universities too and put an end to all this,” he wrote.

The delegation's purpose is to take part in the 37th International Islamic Unity Conference, as reported by Iran's state news agency, IRNA, citing the Islamic Republic's Embassy in Kabul.

In May, a clash between Iranian border guards and the Afghan Taliban resulted in the deaths of at least two Iranians and one Taliban soldier. According to a report in the Iranian reformist daily newspaper Ham-Mihan, approximately 50 Iranians have lost their lives in border skirmishes with the Taliban since 2021.

Despite Iran's official non-recognition of the Taliban government, several delegations from the Taliban have made trips to Iran following their assumption of power in Afghanistan. In June 2022, Taliban representatives visited Tehran to participate in a border commission summit between Tehran and Kabul.

The Taliban move to cut off Helmand River's water flow from Afghanistan has had dire consequences for the inhabitants of the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan. Wetlands in Sistan have transformed into salt flats, the once-thriving wildlife has vanished, and many local villages have been deserted.

Firebrand Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami, a member of the presidium of the Assembly of Experts, made this assertion during the assembly's annual meeting. However, the Constitution's Article 111 clearly grants the Assembly of Experts the authority to supervise and even remove the Supreme Leader if he is deemed "incapable of fulfilling his responsibilities as leader." Observers have called Khatami's statement unprecedented and against the Constitution.

Meanwhile, a video clip from the 1980s showed Assembly of Experts Chairman Ahmad Jannati advocating for limiting Khamenei's powers and supervising his behavior and performance. Jannati argued that such limitations were necessary to prevent chaos and distrust among the nation. Khatami, on the other hand, claimed that the law only required Assembly members to ensure that the Supreme Leader remained consistently capable of leading the nation.

There have been disputes over the past 30 years about what exactly the Constitutional Law says about the Assembly's role, but Khatami's unprecedented attempt to do away with the AoE's supervisory role, was an elaborate act to please Khamenei.

Obviously, no one at the Assembly meeting was brave enough to tell Khatami that he was wrong, and the leader's performance needed to be supervised by the Assembly. However, the institution has been so weakened by Khamenei during the past decades that instead of controlling Khamenei, its members have been turned into Khamenei's inferior employees whose only function is to praise him twice a year during their rare meetings while most of its elderly members are seen dozing off.

Khatami claimed that some of the AoE members wish to find faults in Khamenei's performance. This was perceived as another way of intimidating other members.

A scholarly article in the Koranic Studies Journal stated in 2012 that although the word supervision has not been used in article 111 of the constitution, what the article calls for cannot be done by any means other than supervising the leader's performance and behavior.

Iranian analyst Mehdi Mahdavi Azad recalled in an interview with Iran International that while the Assembly initially was debating limiting Khamenei’s powers, Khamenei himself was in favor of the limitations. At that time in 1989, Khamenei at times aligned with reformist politicians either genuinely, or to garner their support. Mahdavi Azad said that Ahmad Khatami probably was backed by other radicals at the Assembly of Experts on Wednesday. However, Khamenei said once again during a meeting with students in 2000 that he was in favor of Assembly of Experts' supervision of his performance.

Since late 2000s, however, Khamenei gradually changed from a hardline cleric to a dictator who treated even his close friends such as former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ruthlessly.

Another Iranian analyst, Morteza Kazemian told Iran International that “The six clerics appointed by Khamenei to the Guardian council were handpick radicals. During the past way, Khamenei has changed the Assembly's combination to serve his own interests."

Kazemian quoted Ahmad Khatami as having said after an AoE meeting with Khamenei in 2006 that he was against the Assembly’s supervision of his performance although according to Khatami, a majority of the Assembly's member believed there should be checks and balances on Khamenei and his financial conglomerate which holds a large part of the country's assets.

Ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia, known as OPEC+, are set to meet on October 4. The panel, called the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, can call for a full OPEC+ meeting if warranted.

Four OPEC+ sources who declined to be named told Reuters that the committee would probably not make any changes to existing policy during Wednesday's meeting as tighter supplies and rising demand drive an oil price rally. Global crude oil prices rose about 30% in the quarter as OPEC+ production cuts squeezed supplies.

Oil has jumped towards $100 a barrel for Brent crude, the highest since 2022, over OPEC+ policy of output cuts and rising demand. The rise of about $30 for each barrel can bring about a handsome boost to Iran’s struggling economy, despite the significant discounts Tehran provides to buyers while the Biden administration has notably relaxed the enforcement of US sanctions. 

The rise can potentially increase Iran’s annual revenues by more than $10 billion annually, given that fact that the country exported close to two million barrels of crude per day in July-August.

With oil rallying, some analysts have cited an increasing probability the Saudi voluntary cuts will be reduced. There are also speculations that the curbs to be extended into 2024. The Saudi and Russian cuts are on top of earlier curbs announced since late 2022 and expected to dominate oil prices for the remainder of this year. The next full OPEC+ meeting is not until November.

There is "increasing probability the voluntary supply cuts by Aramco are reduced," Reuters cited National Australia Bank analysts, referring to Saudi Arabia's state oil producer.

Foreign sources monitoring Iran’s oil shipments estimated in August that daily exports reached close to two million barrels per day, after climbing to above one million in 2022 and 1.5 million earlier this year. A Reuters survey published August 31 showed that OPEC’s oil output rose in August as Iranian supply jumped to its highest since 2018, despite ongoing cuts by OPEC+ alliance to support the market.

SVB International, a consultant, estimates Iran's oil production increased in August to 3.15 million barrels per day (bpd), with crude oil and condensate exports stood at just under 2 million bpd. "Iran is on the path to recover its pre-sanctions oil production," said SVB's Sara Vakhshouri.

With the discounts Iran is offering to China, its main customer, it was probably earning just under $30 billion annually earlier this year. But with more shipments and higher prices, the income can climb to above $40 billion. However, it is not clear how much it receives in cash and how much is bartered for essential imports.

Since the United States exited the JCPOA nuclear accord and imposed the sanctions in 2018, Iran has been selling its oil by clandestine methods to China. Export volumes and prices are a state secret, and all figures are estimates by industry observers and occasional bits and pieces of information from government officials.

“US officials privately acknowledge they’ve gradually relaxed some enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil sales,” Bloomberg News revealed last month. The monetary impact of these sanctions relief measures can be determined by approximating the rise in Iranian exports resulting from reduced enforcement and subsequently projecting the added value of these increased sales.

According to US-based think-tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), “Depending on the discount Iran offered to incentivize purchases from a sanctioned government, the estimated value of Tehran’s additional oil sales — the difference between its realized revenue and what it would have earned if its exports remained at the maximum pressure period’s average level — was $26.3 to $29.5 billion, a number that will continue growing while enforcement remains lax.”