TOKYO: The Japanese government on Jan. 6 welcomed “the restoration” of ties between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, and the AlUla declaration adopted at the GCC Summit held in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, adding that unity among Gulf countries was important to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East.

An official statement issued by the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo hailed mediation efforts, including by Kuwaiti officials, for the settlement of the issue.

“As Saudi Arabia and Qatar reopened their borders, the government of Japan hopes that the agreement will lead to further improvement of the relations among the countries concerned, as well as to easing tensions and stabilization in the region,” the statement said.

The Japan government pledged to continue working to realize peace and stability in the Middle East in cooperation with the countries in question, it added.

DAMASCUS: Syrian air defence forces responded late Wednesday to “Israeli aggression” in the south of the country, state news agency SANA said.
The agency reported Sana reported heavy blasts in southern Syria, indicating that “our air defenses have responded to Israeli aggression”, without providing further details.

LONDON: Iran dialed up tensions in the Gulf this week when its troops stormed a South Korean-flagged tanker as it transited through the strategic Strait of Hormuz — a choke point through which a fifth of world oil output passes. The incident is only the latest in a long line of Iranian acts of “state piracy” in the flashpoint region.

The MT Hankuk Chemi was en route from Saudi Arabia’s Jubail to the UAE’s Fujairah on Monday when members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy boarded the vessel and brought it to the port of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran, placing its multinational crew of 20 under arrest.

Iranian authorities alleged the tanker, carrying 7,200 tons of ethanol, was seized for infringing maritime environmental laws — claims the vessel’s owner denies.

Observers suspect the ship was in fact taken hostage as part of an ongoing row with Seoul over $7 billion in revenue from oil sales that remain frozen in South Korean banks under US sanctions imposed against Iran by the Trump administration.

Although the MT Hankuk Chemi is the first major vessel to be seized by Iran in more than a year, incidents of this kind have become all too common in the Strait of Hormuz and nearby shipping lanes. Several vessels have been boarded or mysteriously attacked since President Donald Trump ramped up his “maximum pressure” campaign, with Iran named as the likely culprit.

The IRGC navy has long used its fleet of speedboats to harass commercial shipping and military vessels in the region, seizing at least six ships in 2019 over alleged fuel smuggling. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to blockade the strait if it is attacked.

Several incidents pre-date the current tensions. In January 2016, the IRGC seized two US Navy riverine command boats after they entered Iranian territorial waters near Iran’s Farsi Island. After a flurry of phone calls between then-US secretary of state John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the sailors were released unharmed 15 hours later.

In March 2007, the IRGC detained 15 British navy personnel from HMS Cornwall as they were searching a merchant vessel off the Iran-Iraq coast. They were released 13 days later. A similar incident occurred in 2004 when six Royal Marines and two Royal Navy sailors were captured by the IRGC in the Shatt al-Arab waterway. They were released three days later.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has also launched repeated attacks on ports and ships in recent years, routinely planting marine mines in the southern Red Sea and in the Bab Al-Mandab Strait in the path of commercial shipping.

The militia has repeatedly rebuffed UN pleas to allow an inspection team to enter the FSO Safer, a 45-year-old oil tanker abandoned off the port of Hodeidah with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board, to conduct urgent repairs. In an extraordinary session, the UN expressed fears on July 15, 2020, of “catastrophe” if the vessel ruptured into the Red Sea.

In May 2019, Washington deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and four B-52 bombers to the Middle East, citing unspecified Iranian threats. A matter of days later, on May 12, four commercial ships, including two Saudi Aramco oil tankers, were damaged near the port of Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman in what the UAE called a “sabotage attack.”

On June 13, the oil tankers Front Altair and Kokuka Courageous were also both rocked by explosions, thought to have been caused by limpet mines or flying objects. Days later, on June 20, Iran shot down an American RQ-4A surveillance drone flying over the Strait of Hormuz, raising tensions further.

At the time, US President Donald Trump said Iranian boats harassing the US navy “will be shot out of the water.”

The following month, the IRGC held the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero for two months for allegedly ramming a fishing boat. The move was widely seen as an act of retaliation after British Royal Marines detained an Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, in the Strait of Gibraltar on suspicion of violating EU sanctions on Syria.

In the wake of the incident, US Central Command established Operation Sentinel, invited nations to coordinate on surveillance and provide escorts to their flagged commercial vessels in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Oman.

After European powers voiced qualms about the possibility of being dragged into a war with Iran, the US rebranded Operation Sentinel as the “International Maritime Security Construct” in Sept. 2019, headquartered in Bahrain.

The world’s eyes are once again on Iran as it uses the capture of the Hankuk Chemi to win concessions from South Korea. Seoul has confirmed it is in talks with Tehran and Washington to use the frozen Iranian money to purchase coronavirus vaccines for the country.

At the same time, South Korea’s foreign ministry said it is launching legal action to demand the ship’s release. Its defense ministry has also deployed its 300-strong Cheonghae anti-piracy unit to the Strait of Hormuz aboard the destroyer Choi Young to “ensure the safety” of South Korean nationals.

Shin Beom-chul, chief researcher at the Korea Research Institute for Economy and Society, told Arab News that the Iranian move is a desperate bid to get recognition from the incoming Biden administration in the US, which is expected to take a relatively softer stance vis-a-vis Iran.

“Tehran is sending a clear message that it can ratchet up aggression in the region any time, while the issue of frozen money in South Korea is just part of the Trump administration’s financial sanctions,” Shin said.

Iran is reeling from sanctions reintroduced after the Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, in May 2018. Iran’s economic woes have been compounded by one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the region.

European powers, meanwhile, are scrambling to salvage the JCPOA, just as Iran announced on Monday it has stepped up its uranium enrichment to 20 percent purity — far beyond the limits set by the deal.

Tehran’s successive breaches of the nuclear deal are widely interpreted as a means of pressuring European signatories to provide sanctions relief — a move that Washington has branded “nuclear extortion.”

Also fresh in Tehran’s mind this week is the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Force commander, who was eliminated with a US drone strike near Baghdad airport one year ago.

Struggling with sanctions and COVID-19, and bruised by strategic setbacks, Iran appeared to rein in its extra-legal naval activities in 2020. But now the IRGC seems to be reasserting itself in the waning days of the Trump administration.

With little sign of de-escalation in the Gulf, the Hankuk Chemi may not be the last commercial ship to be targeted by Iran in 2021.

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Twitter: @RobertPEdwards

NEW YORK: Syria and close ally Russia clashed with the US and other nations over a Western initiative to suspend Syria’s voting rights in the global chemical weapons watchdog for failing to provide details of three chemical attacks in 2017 that investigators blamed on the Bashar Assad regime. 

The confrontation in the UN Security Council foreshadowed a showdown when the 193 member states of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) meet in The Hague, Netherlands, in April to consider a French-drafted measure, on behalf of 46 countries, to suspend Syria’s “rights and privileges” in the body. 

The French proposal was a response to Syria’s failure to meet a 90-day deadline set in July by the OPCW’s executive council for Damascus to declare the nerve agent sarin and chlorine, which OPCW investigators said last April were dropped by the Syrian air force on the central town of Latamneh in late March 2017. 

The Western effort reflects a much broader effort to obtain accountability for Syrian chemical attacks and highlight claims that the Assad regime is secretly continuing its chemical weapons program. 

Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013, pressed by Russia after a deadly chemical weapons attack that the West blamed on Damascus. 

By August 2014, the Assad regime declared that the destruction of its chemical weapons was completed. But Syria’s initial declaration of its chemical stockpiles and chemical weapons production sites has remained in dispute. 

Ireland’s UN ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason, a new council member, said it was “deeply disturbing” that the OPCW still cannot determine whether the initial declaration was accurate or complete because of gaps and inconsistencies. She said the problems are not “minor” as some would portray, alluding to Russia. 

“Over those seven years, the number of issues that need to be addressed has expanded from five to 19,” Byrne Nason said. “There have been 17 amendments to Syria’s declaration including the addition of a production facility, four research and development centers, and doubling of the amount of declared agents and chemicals.” 

In addition, she said, there are issues related to “hundreds of tons of missing agents and munitions reported destroyed” before Syria joined the chemical convention as well as recent reports of a production facility that Damascus declared as never having been used, “where there is clear evidence to the contrary.” 

Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul, another new council member, also expressed concern at Syria’s failure to explain an unnamed chemical that can be used in chemical weapons but also has non-weapons uses. It was detected at the Barzah facilities of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. 

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, again accused OPCW investigators of being “unscrupulous” and alleged they used “forgeries” and “manipulations” to blame Syria. 

He called the chemical watchdog “seriously ill with politicization.” And he accused a number of unnamed countries of “playing this `chemical card’ to step up pressure on the Syrian government that they failed to overthrow in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.” 

As for the initial Syrian declaration, Polyansky said Damascus was not “an extraordinary case,” pointing to amended declarations by Western countries including France and Germany as well as Libya. He accused Western delegations of trying to “inflate agitation” around Syria. 

French Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere expressed regret at “the false accusations of those who seek to discredit OPCW” and its findings about Syria’s attacks. 

“There is simply the reality of the facts,” he said. “We all know them: the regime used weapons of war prohibited by international law against its own population, and since then we have seem chemical weapons re-emerge and become commonplace in Syria and elsewhere.” 

British Ambassador Barbara Woodward said OPCW investigators, alone and initially with a UN team, determined Syria used chemical weapons on at least six occasions. 

“These are not hypothetical issues for the thousands of Syrian civilians who have suffered the horrifying effects on the body of nerve agents and chlorine,” she said. 

Syria’s deputy foreign minister and former UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, accused some unnamed Western nations of using the OPCW “as a platform to fabricate allegations and then justify an assault and aggression on Syria.” 

The aim, he said, is “to frame the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons and exonerate the terrorists and the sponsors … and give them the necessary means to escape through the occupied Golan area through Israel to the capitals of Western states where they can live.” 

Russia’s Polyansky said Syria could not meet the OPCW’s anti-Syria demands on Latamneh because it “simply doesn’t have” the chemical weapons and facilities the organization is seeking. 

“Hopefully, the majority of delegations at the member states’ conference in April will reject this provocation, and the West-initiated decision, which is `punitive’ by nature, will not pass,” he said. 

US deputy ambassador Richard Mills said neither the Security Council nor the world “is fooled” by Russia’s accelerated campaign to discredit the OPCW. 

He urged council members to call on all countries to support the French draft against Syria in April “aimed at promoting accountability for the Assad regime’s actions.” 

“It is time that the Syrian people, and indeed all the globe’s people, be allowed to live in a world free of the threat of chemical weapons,” he said.

RABAT: Rabat, Jan 6, 2021 Agence France Presse: Morocco on Wednesday authorized for emergency use the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, the health ministry said.
The North African nation, with some 35 million people, has recorded over 447,000 Covid-19 cases including 7,618 deaths, according to the latest official count.
The government says it has ordered 65 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccines as well as from the Chinese firm Sinopharm.
It says preparations for rolling out the vaccine are “very advanced” but has not given a date for injections to start.
The authorities re-imposed a nationwide curfew and other restrictive measures on December 21 in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.