coorslite21

Must be the new math....😆

Sandy....days gone when the ER was $3 + Iraq was supported economically by theirs vast oil sales. Russia has 92% of its revenue from oil. This World Bank and IMF BS really gets old! That along with the...."continued education" for years now of the exchange rate fo Iraqi citizens so they will understand the event when it happens.... Crazy stuff!

Clarity bill scheduled for 9-15.....1st day of return from recess...CL

Glad to have your input NEP....Hope you are well! Hopefully the Clarity Act will pass before recess...another piece of the puzzle!... CL

If inflation was the issue you might see a LOP. That isn't the case here. Trump has his sights set on everything "Golden"....(just observe the room where he visits with leaders of foreign countries). His "Golden" Battleship....and on & on... There is a plan...it is all connected....World debt requires a "reset" to prevent financial ruin.....Interesting times indeed! CL

Trump has to play the game of the midterms... We strike...prices rise....we negotiate...prices drop.. I see a potential treaty to open up the Strait and shelf the No Nukes talk until after the elections... Keep the House & Senate....Iran is then finished....jmo. CL

https://apnews.com/article/turkey-iraq-prime-minister-alzaidi-visit-facc45078b547e096e96547dc093588d

Skip to main contentSkip to navigation Claim discount Sign in US The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian Show more Search input google-search Search Support us Print subscriptions Newsletters Download the app Search jobs Digital Archive Guardian Licensing Live events About Us The Guardian app Video Podcasts Pictures Inside the Guardian Guardian Weekly Crosswords Wordiply Corrections Tips The long read Iraq’s impossible predicament: why the country is trapped between Iran and the US View image in fullscreen An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike at Khor Al Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, on 11 March. Photograph: AP With the outbreak of this year’s war, Iraq’s balancing act between the two antagonists has collapsed, exposing a perilously fragile state The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Thu 23 Jul 2026 00.00 EDT Share One week after the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a regional war, drones started flying over Basra in southern Iraq. They were targeting Iraq’s oil industry. They hit an oilfield operated by BP, as well as a cargo terminal at Basra airport and a large compound that houses foreign companies that service the oil sector. Another attack on 6 March hit the same compound, striking offices and warehouses used by Halliburton and KBR, two US companies that have been in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The attack sparked a massive fire that lit up the night sky. In the wider war, it was not a particularly notable day – but in Iraq the strikes laid bare just how weak the state had become and “how easily sovereignty could be violated”, as one senior Iraqi security official put it to me. For 40 years, the US, Iran and Israel existed in an uneasy equilibrium of neither peace nor war. As this has come to a sudden, dramatic end, Iraq finds itself caught in the middle. More attacks on Iraqi energy infrastructure were to come. On 11 March, an Iranian drone boat attacked two oil tankers off the port of Basra, setting them ablaze and killing at least one crew member. In the following days and weeks, a succession of drone strikes hit more oilfields operated by foreign companies. Hundreds of energy sector workers from American, European and Chinese firms left, many travelling overland because the country’s airspace was closed. Thousands of Iraqi workers were sent home. No one claimed responsibility for these attacks (apart from the strikes on the oil tankers, which Iran acknowledged). The central government in Baghdad and the local authorities in Basra were remarkably quiet, offering only empty official statements about sovereignty and the promise of investigations. The truth is that most of these attacks were not coming from Iran. They were undertaken by Iraqis acting on Iraqi soil – the work of factions of the country’s powerful, Iran-backed Shia militias. “This is an act of treason,” a visibly shaken senior official at the oil ministry in Basra told me. Speaking confidentially, multiple officials told me the oil attacks had been carried out by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), an umbrella group of Shia paramilitary organisations that were originally trained and equipped by Iran to fight the Americans after the 2003 invasion. IRI factions are also members of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) – a collection of Iran-backed, mainly Shia militias in Iraq that were brought together in 2014 to fight the Islamic State. The PMU is, in theory, subordinate to the Iraqi government but in reality follows its own agenda, with investments in construction and agriculture giving it a source of economic power. While Iraq, which is majority Shia, may seemingly have a single, unitary government run from Baghdad, in reality multiple groups with varying degrees of independence – formed in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion – exert huge influence. Today, there are two types of paramilitary militia in the country. Those that use their weapons to protect their economic interests – the state contracts and businesses that they have cultivated over the years. And those that are primarily driven by ideology: deeply committed to the Iranian project of defeating Israel and expelling the United States from the Middle East. In 2026, this unstable balance has erupted into violence not seen for years. On the one hand, the US/Israeli war on Iran has spurred the hardline ideological paramilitaries to Tehran’s aid, attacking not just Iraq’s oil infrastructure but US military bases and the US embassy in Baghdad. On the other hand, a new, US-backed Iraqi prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, has upped the ante by giving all of the country’s militia groups a deadline of 30 September to disarm and incorporate their fighting divisions into the Iraqi state. This is to satisfy longstanding American ambitions to reduce Iran’s influence in Iraq. While al-Zaidi has had some success, the hardcore groups have steadfastly refused to give up their weapons. As long as there is an American presence in Iraq, with Israeli jets flying overhead, the IRI will continue to fight. Speak to Iraqi government officials and you hear nothing but anger and exhaustion about the attacks on their oil infrastructure. “The installations that were attacked were on Iraqi soil, paid for by Iraq, as was all the destroyed equipment,” one told me. It was not the US companies that would be harmed – they would charge Iraq for the destroyed assets – but the Iraqi economy, the oil sector and the reputation of Iraq as a safe place to conduct business, he added. He also noted that the attackers had highly accurate intelligence, probably leaked from within, about where to strike and which building or warehouse to destroy. View image in fullscreen People walk near farmland by the Zubair oil field near Basra, Iraq. Photograph: Essam Al-Sudani/Reuters He and other oil-sector officials in Basra told me that the aim of the attacks was to disrupt oil production, raise global prices and ramp up pressure on the US administration to stop its war on Iran. Within weeks of the war’s start, Basra’s output had fallen by two-thirds, with exports essentially halted. “Maybe they want to drive these western companies out to replace them with companies from countries more aligned to them,” the official said. What is clear is that consequences of the war in Iran, which escalated dramatically this week after the collapse of the ceasefire, have been profound in Iraq – exposing the weakness of a state that is perilously divided between the war’s two main antagonists. In one of Baghdad’s upmarket restaurants, a government adviser reclined on a large sofa. Until recently, he said, the Iraqi government had managed to keep most of the country’s militia factions under control. As the war in Gaza raged, and even during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in 2025, they were kept at bay through dialogue and negotiation. But the killing of Ali Khamenei changed everything. “You can’t ask the factions not to participate any more,” he said. “This is an existential struggle and a religious duty.” The adviser could see why Iran and its supportive factions in Iraq were doing what they were doing. Iraqi airspace and American bases in Iraq were being used to pummel Iran with airstrikes. Iranian officials had told him that 40,000 Starlink devices, used to bypass the Islamic republic’s internet clampdown, had been smuggled into Iran from Iraq during the recent anti-regime demonstrations. “We should be grateful they didn’t use their full force and strike Iraq in retaliation, because they could easily have burned half the country,” he said. “And what do we have to defend ourselves against them?” In another part of Baghdad, I met with a high-ranking security official who had worked closely with the Americans for many years. He had little time to empathise with Iranian anxieties, but echoed the analysis of Iraq’s military ineptness. “The war has proven the weakness of Iraq. I don’t mean only militarily. Our country was violated by everyone, our airspace used by both sides.” The state could not even protect “its own soldiers and officers when we came under attack by the militias”, he said. “Everyone in the military command knows exactly who [the attackers] are. Maybe we don’t know the name of the person who pilots the drone, but we know who gave the orders, the chain of command and where they were launched from.” He nodded towards a police car parked nearby, the policemen standing around it, and referred to all the cameras installed on street corners. “Some rockets and drones were launched from the centre of Baghdad. Who can travel with rocket launchers through the city? How can you pass all the checkpoints, or drive into the countryside and fire them as they show in videos, without being detected?” By way of explanation, the conversation turned to corruption. There are honourable commanders in the Iraqi security forces, he conceded, but many of the highest-ranking posts are awarded to officers only after they make a payment to their superiors. “If you pay US$5m to take command of a force,” he said, “the priority becomes protecting that investment by avoiding confrontation, and that is a disaster.” The reason it is an investment is because a high-ranking security post is a way of making money – through fraud, embezzlement and accepting bribes. He placed his hands on the table, to emphasise his point. “When officers look and see their commander running their own schemes to siphon money, that affects the whole security forces.” Economics partly explains the division between the older militias, which have largely accepted the prime minister’s decree that they be incorporated into the Iraqi state, and the newer, hardline factions under the IRI banner. In late May, the highly influential Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for his militia to be placed under the command of the state, and two other factions followed suit. But the move was met with derision and disdain by the hardline paramilitaries, who declared that their weapons were sacred and would not be surrendered until the end times. In effect, they were saying that they were fighting for an ideological cause, while the older militias were merely looking out for their own economic interests. View image in fullscreen Moqtada al-Sadr. Photograph: Qassem Al-Kaabi/AFP/Getty Images On 7 April, Iran and the US. The following day, the IRI announced that it would also be suspending operations for the duration of the ceasefire. (Fighting continued, albeit at a low level.) On that same day, Iraq and Saudi technical teams were having an online meeting to explore the reopening of the Iraqi-Saudi pipeline, which has been closed since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. They were looking for a new way for Iraqi oil to bypass the pinch point in the strait of Hormuz. As the oil industry came to a near halt, long queues formed outside petrol stations, bringing to mind the worst days of chaos that followed the 2003 war. In a statement, the ministry of oil blamed the shortage on the shutdown of some refineries after foreign workers left the country and on its inability to export unrefined, heavy fuel oil. For a country so dependent on oil sales, which underwrite the salaries of 4 million public-sector employees, the decision by Iran-aligned militias to attack their own economy might have looked suicidal. “Not necessarily,” a civil-rights activist in the city of Basra told me. “Many people believe that oil companies are exploiting the country and they find the attacks justified.” Basra is one of the most polluted cities in the world, where people breathe the toxins from the burning flares of oil wells and drink brackish water. At the same time, its citizens are surrounded by signs of oil wealth – car dealerships, fancy sushi restaurants, expensive real estate – that are available only to a few. It is not surprising that many shrug their shoulders when they hear of attacks on oil companies’ assets. How did postwar Iraq fail to make use of its immense oil wealth to deliver a better life for its people? On the eve of the US invasion in 2003, the country’s oil infrastructure was in near ruin after decades of war and UN sanctions. The machinery was antiquated and production was kept alive only by veteran engineers. In the aftermath of the invasion, looting and sabotage nearly collapsed the industry altogether. Lacking the finances and capacity to rebuild the sector on its own, Iraq turned to international firms, signing contracts with major oil companies including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. The deals inked were not the profit-sharing agreements that the foreign companies wanted – Iraq still takes huge pride in having nationalised its oil industry in 1972 – but less lucrative, flat per-barrel service fees. Baghdad had a stated ambition to pump about 12m barrels a day by 2017, a level that would rival Saudi Arabia. That target was never remotely met, peaking closer to 4.5-5m barrels a day in the late 2010s and hovering there. Gradually, the postwar euphoria around Iraq’s oil potential cooled, and within a few years companies began to abandon their projects. The thin margins had made Iraq one of the least profitable places the firms operated, but the retreat was mainly driven by political instability, contractual disputes and massive delays in government payments. The delays occur because of multiple layers of bureaucracy, deployed ostensibly to prevent corruption but in practice functioning as bottlenecks where bribes are extracted to smooth the process. Multinationals that are bound by anti-corruption laws generally refuse to pay such bribes, and their fees are held up as a result. Ministry officials and business insiders in Basra described to me a contracting system that – as elsewhere in Iraq – is dominated by political parties, clans and sometimes armed groups that line their pockets by exploiting agreements with contractors and subcontractors. In late May, the deputy oil minister responsible for the country’s refineries, Adnan al-Jumaili, was detained on corruption charges – part of the new prime minister’s anti-corruption drive. Al-Jumaili was shown on television in a yellow jumpsuit, surrounded by dozens of machine guns and boxes of ammunition that were reportedly found at his home. Investigators said they also recovered $10m (£7.5m) in cash, 3bn dinars (roughly £1.7m) and 1.5kg of gold. As the investigation expanded, security forces detained 47 people, including 13 MPs and senior officials, and seized hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold. Among those arrested in the same sweep was a second deputy oil minister, who had already been sanctioned by the US for allegedly diverting Iraqi oil to benefit Iran. It is no surprise that, for many Iraqis, the oil industry is less a symbol of the country’s pride than all that is wrong with it. This July, the funeral procession of the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, took place in Iran – though it also crossed the border with Iraq, drawing 3.8 million people on to the streets of Najaf alone, according to official figures. Unlike in the choreographed ceremonies in Iran, massive throngs in Iraq pushed and shoved to get close to the coffin in the fierce summer heat. The white turbans of mullahs came undone as they jostled with the crowds; arms stretched forward, people wept, and those who could not get close enough threw their shawls and scarves at the casket to be blessed by it. Away from the crowds, the coffins, including a smaller one for Khamenei’s granddaughter, who was killed alongside him, were received inside the shrine of Imam Ali, a holy site in Shia Islam. Iraq’s leaders, among them the new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, stood in solemn silence alongside the Iranian president. View image in fullscreen The coffin of the late Iranian supreme lleader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is carried by mourners to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, Iraq, on 8 July. Photograph: Anmar Khalil/AP Six days later, as if to perfectly illustrate the double-edged nature of Iraqi politics, that same prime minister sat next to Donald Trump in the Oval Office, beaming as he listened to the American president declare that the two men had “tremendous chemistry” and that Iraq was “very well represented”. Al-Zaidi pledged, again, to disarm the militias and fight corruption, and invited US companies to invest in Iraq. For many years, a well-connected government insider told me, the Americans sat down with Iraqi prime ministers and repeated the same demands about disarming the Iran-aligned militias and ending corruption. “This has been going on since God knows how long,” he said. “They sat with Haider al-Abadi, with Adel Abdul-Mahdi, with Mustafa al-Kadhimi, with al-Sudani, with al-Maliki, with every prime minister. And during all those years, Iraq received a great deal of American support, but did nothing whatsoever to change its relationship with Iran. On the contrary, Iranian influence only deepened and expanded with time.” Why the seeming change this year, with al-Zaidi telling the Iranian-backed militias that they need to give up their arms? American pressure coincided with the economic crisis. The closure of the strait of Hormuz and the attacks on its oil installations have brought Iraq to the brink of bankruptcy. Washington has also made use of the huge leverage it has over the Iraqi economy. In an arrangement dating back two decades, Iraq’s oil revenues are held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Physical shipments of dollars are flown from the US to Baghdad so the government can pay salaries and run the state. In April, the US took the extraordinary measure of stopping these dollar shipments. The Iraqi government got the message: al-Zaidi ordered the pro-Iranian militias to give up their guns in June, and the dollar shipments resumed in July. One spring evening in Basra, the corniche along the Shatt al-Arab river was packed with people walking up and down, enjoying the early-evening breeze: families with children holding balloons; young men in fitted dishdashas or jeans; women, some in black abayas, others in Gulf-style robes and headscarves, a few in trousers with their waist-length hair flowing. As music pulsed through the air, a line of photographers did brisk business as people queued to be pictured in front of the fountain installed in the river. View image in fullscreen Ali al-Zaidi meets Donald Trump at the White House on 14 July. Photograph: Andrew Thomas/CNP/Shutterstock On the other side of the street, gazing down benevolently, was a massive portrait of the city’s governor, Asaad Al Eidani, hung from a five-storey building. After taking office in 2017, Al Eidani initiated major public works: paving roads, extending the sewage network and securing Basra extended hours of electricity supply. (His detractors accuse him of benefiting from public contracts and awarding major projects to his inner circle, claims he vehemently denies.) He also built relationships with the neighbouring Gulf states, easing trade and travel to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, hosting a Gulf football tournament that drew thousands of regional visitors to Basra, turning the city towards its Arab neighbours and their lucrative markets while maintaining its cultural and political ties with neighbouring Iran. Along the corniche stands the empty shell of the Kuwaiti consulate. It was stormed in April by locals at the instigation of militias, in response to a suspected Kuwaiti airstrike that killed several Iraqis; this was itself retaliation, Iraqi officials said, for an earlier attack launched by militias from Iraqi soil. The abandoned structure stands as a reminder of the dashed hopes of Iraq maintaining close relations with both Iran and the Gulf states. Walking through Basra, I found myself thinking about how implausible it was to imagine that Iraq’s pro-Iran fighters would give up their weapons; that Iran, at a moment when it needs to marshal every asset it has to fight the US and Israel, would abandon its allies; and that the corrupt politicians and businesspeople who have spent two decades siphoning Iraq dry would relinquish their wealth at the behest of a new, inexperienced prime minister. As I walked, I met one old man dressed in a white dishdasha with a knitted skull cap on his head. Iran, he said, was the last chess piece protecting Islam and defending Arab nationalism. It’s our duty as Iraqis to support it, he added. When I asked him if he was worried that with no oil sales, the Iraqi economy might collapse, he said la (no): America will not abandon its project in Iraq. It will make sure our economy won’t collapse. And there, in a few words, was Iraq’s impossible predicament – dependent for life on two sworn enemies. The Long Read magazine summer edition AI in the classroom, vending machines in the canteen, homeless people in the library, no one in the pub. Surprising stories from our strange new world in the new edition of the Long Read magazine. Buy your copy here. Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here. Explore more on these topics Iraq The long read US-Israel war on Iran Middle East and north Africa Share Most viewed US news US politics World Climate crisis Middle East Ukraine US immigration Soccer Business Environment Tech Science Newsletters The Filter Wellness News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning Sign up for our email About us Help Complaints & corrections Contact us Tip us off SecureDrop Privacy policy Cookie policy Tax strategy Terms & conditions All topics All writers Newsletters Digital newspaper archive Bluesky Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Threads TikTok YouTube Advertise with us Guardian Labs Search jobs Work with us Accessibility settings Back to top © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)

Skip to content July 19, 2026 46°C Iraq secures US agreement on banks’ return to dollar access BusinessIraq IraqiNews July 18, 2026 10764 3 min Washington (IraqiNews.com) – Iraq and the United States have agreed on a framework that would allow several Iraqi banks that have been cut off from international financial networks to gradually re-establish access to cross-border banking services, boosting confidence in the country’s financial sector and supporting the Iraqi dinar. Arabs& Middle Easterners The agreement was reached after negotiations between Central Bank of Iraq Governor Nizar Hussein and senior US Treasury officials, following Prime Minister Ali al-Falih al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington, during which Baghdad requested increased economic and financial cooperation with the US. According to the agreement, Iraqi banks that complete the first phase of the central bank’s restructuring and relicensing program and meet international standards for compliance, governance, and risk controls will be able to reconnect to correspondent banking networks for transactions in currencies apart from the US dollar. Those who subsequently meet further regulatory and compliance criteria will be entitled to continue transactions in US dollars, restoring full access to international payment channels. According to the central bank, seven Iraqi banks are presently eligible to re-enter correspondent banking partnerships in non-dollar currencies and may ultimately recover access to dollar transactions when more compliance inspections are completed. The decision is a significant advance in Iraq’s multi-year effort to reform its banking industry, which has faced challenges due to inadequate anti-money laundering measures and concerns about illegal dollar transactions. These limitations hampered access to foreign currency, increased the difference between the official and parallel exchange rates for the Iraqi dinar, and made trade finance difficult for many importers. Expanding correspondent banking ties is projected to promote the flow of international commerce and investment, streamline cross-border payments, and reduce pressure on Iraq’s foreign currency market by providing banks with more access to global financial networks. Arabs& Middle Easterners According to analysts, greater financial linkages could help boost dinar trust by enhancing the efficiency and transparency of foreign currency transactions. The Central Bank said that the deal is part of a larger goal to modernize Iraq’s banking sector, align it with international regulatory norms, and increase involvement from global financial institutions. It further said that Iraqi bank oversight will be enhanced, with institutions that fail to fulfill governance, compliance, or anti-money laundering criteria facing penalties such as limits on foreign banking activity or the loss of operating licenses. Tags:America Baghdad CBI iraq Iraqi dinar Previous post Brazil’s KraftOne expands in Iraq with Karbala airport… Arabs& Middle Easterners Next post Seven Iraqi banks under US restrictions cleared for… Recent Post Iraq Iraq gives priority to electricity interconnection with Saudi Arabia July 19, 2026 Iraq Starlink assigns IP addresses to users in Iraq July 19, 2026 Iraq PM Al Zaidi arrives in Doha to condole Qatari Emir July 19, 2026 Iraq PM Al Zaidi concludes US summit, pledges strategic shift with July 19, 2026 Top Categories Health Iraq Sports Tech World Subscribe to our Newsletter Be the first to receive the latest buzz contests & more! Follow us: © 2000-2025, IRAQI NEWS. All rights reserved. Arabs& Middle Easterners About Contact Us Submit Content Privacy Policy World News Updates

Breaking News: Chevron Iraq Shuts Down Khor Mor Gas Field Amid Security Threats By Alex Kimani - Jul 16, 2026, 11:30 AM CDT United Arab Emirates' Dana Gas has suspended operations at all main production facilities in the Khor Mor gas field due to credible security threats amid an increasingly volatile regional situation. The decision to close the facility was made in coordination with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Sulaymaniyah authorities, and the Iraqi federal government in a bid to safeguard personnel and infrastructure. The Khor Mor facility has previously faced repeated security challenges, including rocket and drone strikes from armed groups, resulting in production halts and widespread blackouts. Located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the Khor Mor field is a critical energy asset for the region, supplying more than 80% of the Kurdistan Region's electricity generation needs. The sudden cessation of gas deliveries to power stations is anticipated to reduce the region's electricity generation capacity by up to 3,000 megawatts; consequently, power availability in the area will be heavily restricted to just a few hours a day. The UAE-based operator has, however, reassured its customers and stakeholders that the plant remains in a state of operational readiness to be quickly brought back online once conditions improve. The Khor Mor gas field holds an estimated reserve of 8.2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas, making it the largest producing non-associated gas field in Iraq. The field is operated by Pearl Petroleum, a consortium whose majority shareholders include the UAE's Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, each holding a 35% stake, while the remaining 30% is split equally between Austria's OMV AG (OCTPK:OMVJF), Hungary's MOL Group and DNO, under an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government. The $1.1 billion KM250 expansion at the Khor Mor gas field successfully boosted production capacity by 50% to 750 Million Standard Cubic Feet per Day (MMSCFD). While the plant's output fuels local power networks, the surplus gas is earmarked to supply federal power plants in the rest of Iraq. This will help ease Baghdad's persistent power deficits and reduce its costly reliance on imported Iranian gas. By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com India Hikes Diesel and Jet Fuel Export Tax Brent Futures Flip to Backwardation as Middle East Supply Risks Return U.S. Gasoline Prices Could Hit $4 Per Gallon Within Days Back to homepage Set us as your preferred Google source « Previous: Iran Instructs Houthis to Prepare Red Sea Shipping Attacks Next: EU Sets Target To Double Electrification Rate, Cut Oil & Gas Use » Alex Kimani Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. More Related posts China’s Critical Minerals Grip Puts $6.5 Trillion of Global Industry at Risk Asian LNG Spot Prices Jump 10% as Hormuz Crisis Reignites Supply Fears Pakistan Pays Highest Spot LNG Price in Four Years as Qatar Supply Falters Most Popular Oil Prices Rebound as U.S.-Iran Peace Talks Are Postponed ING: Oil Prices Have Overshot To The Downside Russia’s Oil Windfall Vanishes as Urals Crashes to $42 a Barrel Iran Tightens Grip on Strait of Hormuz Tanker Traffic Saudi Arabia Set to Slash Oil Prices as Hormuz Reopens Leave a comment More About Us About Us Site News Sitemap Advertise with us Site info Terms & Conditions Disclaimer Privacy Policy Sitemap Privacy Manager © OilPrice.com The materials provided on this Web site are for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended to provide tax, legal, or investment advice. Nothing contained on the Web site shall be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or offer to buy or sell a security to any person in any jurisdiction. Merchant of Record: A Media Solutions trading as Oilprice.com

News MENA Iraq recovers 375kg of gold in corruption raids Adnan Al Jumaili, Iraq’s deputy oil minister, being held on suspicion of corruption The National July 13, 2026 Add on Google A 375kg haul of gold has been recovered in the investigation linked to detained deputy oil minister Adnan Al Jumaili in Iraq, the Supreme Judicial Council announced on Monday. He was arrested last month on suspicion of corruption. Investigators have alleged that billions of dollars in kickbacks and embezzlement were connected to oil refinery contracts, according to security officials familiar with the case. The case forms part of a broader anti-corruption campaign launched by Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi after he took office in May. CommentWhy Iraq needs a different approach to fighting corruption Read More “In co-ordination with the Kurdistan Region, and under the supervision of the President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Faiq Zaidan, 358kg of gold were recovered,” a statement from the judicial council, carried by Iraqi state media, said. It added that another 17kg was seized in a separate investigation, bringing the total to 375kg. The judicial council said the recovered gold was handed over to the Central Bank of Iraq as part of efforts to complete inquiries into the Al Jumaili case. Investigators have discovered stashes of money hidden in water bottles, walls and a drainpipe in a series of startling finds since his arrest. More than $100 million in cash has been seized. Last month, Iraqi security personnel arrested 47 legislators and other officials in a series of raids. Some suspects implicated in Mr Al Jumaili's case could be covered by an amnesty law amended in January 2025, meaning they may escape punishment if they pay back any outstanding funds. Corruption has been rife in Iraq under successive governments elected since the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein. In 2021, former president Barham Salih estimated $150 billion had been lost to embezzlement since then. Updated: July 13, 2026, 1:06 PM IraqIraq anti-corruption drive Read next... $20m stuffed into water bottles seized in Iraqi corruption probe Rainy day fund? Iraq corruption probe finds $11m cash stuffed down drain Most popular today 1 Tom Holland and Matt Damon enjoy chai at century-old Mumbai cafe ahead of The Odyssey premiere 2 Iran war latest: Strait of Hormuz crossings have effectively collapsed, maritime firm says 3 Why a Dubai software engineer is donating hundreds of meals to delivery riders 4 Cartoon for July 13, 2026 5 Register now for The National’s award-winning journalism – free and tailored to you Latest from The National

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5959813-us-iraq-relationship-reset/amp/

China has been dealing in oil with the gold backed petroyuan for over a year now. No surprise here. CL

So you don't believe Iran has boat loads of IQD?....

Not trying to rain on the parade... Over the decades Maliki...Alaq... and others ....have funneled $billions of IQD to Iran.... Any RI....or RV......makes Iran a richer country.... Tell me why this won't prevent this blessing to occur.......CL