Qassem Soleimani killing: Will oil become a weapon of choice for Iran?

Oil prices have been on an upward trajectory since early October and the killing of Soleimani boosted them to their highest level since April

Events in 2019 served as a reminder for just how vulnerable the world’s oil supply is, and Iran was usually blamed as the culprit for attacks on ships, pipelines and processing plants in the Middle East. But the knock-on effects blew over quickly in a world that appeared oblivious to the geopolitics of oil. Now in the wake of the US killing of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general who led the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force, the big question hanging over the market is whether Iran will target oil in its response.

There is no particular reason to expect that Iran’s retaliation will target oil, except that even the best guarded of the industry’s installations have been shown to be vulnerable and the steady stream of oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz presents multiple opportunities to disrupt flows. About 34 million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait was passing through the channel on their way out of the Persian Gulf and toward US ports last month, according to Bloomberg tanker tracking.

Attacks in September on Saudi Arabia’s oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais briefly took 5.7 million barrels a day of the country’s oil production capacity offline, the single biggest disruption in supply on record. It served as a wake-up call that the world’s oil security blanket — the spare production capacity that is almost uniquely held by the kingdom — was not nearly as secure as once was thought…

Iraq asks foreign troops to leave; Trump threatens Iran with retaliation

Iran and the United States have been competing for clout in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein

Iraq’s parliament called on Sunday for US and other foreign troops to leave as a backlash grows against the US killing of a topIranian general, and President Donald Trump doubled down on threats to target Iranian cultural sites if Tehran retaliates.

Deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers. Iran‘s most prominent general, Qassem Soleimani, was killed on Friday in a U.S. drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an attack that carried U.S.-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters. An Iranian government minister denounced Trump as a “terrorist in a suit” after the U.S. president sent a series of Twitter posts on Saturday threatening to hit 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets to avenge Soleimani’s death.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Washington from Florida on Sunday evening, Trump stood by those comments. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” he said. Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorizing the strike, and some said his comments about targeting cultural sites amounted to threats to commit war crimes. Many asked why Soleimani, long seen as a threat by U.S. authorities, had to be killed now….