“Based on an agreement which is going to be implemented in the coming days, Iraq is going to open a euro savings bank account in which the country’s debts to National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) and the Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir) will be saved,” Ardakanian said on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.

“Iraq's recent and past debts to our country will be transferred and saved in this account after being exchanged to euro,” the minister said.

This way, transferring the money or using it for purchasing basic goods and medicine will be less problematic considering the U.S. sanctions, he emphasized.
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According to the official, the savings in this account can also be used for paying Iranian contractors and companies’ dues in the mentioned country.

Economists say that Iran has dealt with Iraq over the past ten years as a bank to revive its economy and finance its wars in Syria and Yemen.

​Although essentially economic and financial in nature, the Iraqi government’s decision to devalue the Iraqi dinar against the US dollar has had political and strategic implications for Iran and its militias in Iraq and the region.

The unresponsive reaction of the black market to the government's decision revealed that Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has actually dealt a major economic blow to Iran's allies in Iraq at a sensitive moment.

The Baghdad government reduced the exchange rate of the local currency so that every US dollar would be sold for 1,450 dinars instead of 1,119 in order to face an unprecedented cash liquidity crisis due to low oil prices and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Chinese company is nearing a multibillion-dollar deal with Iraq’s state-run oil marketing company.

​Chinese ZhenHua Oil Company is finalizing a rare multibillion-dollar deal with Iraq’s state-run oil marketing company (SOMO), in which ZhenHua would agree to a monthly purchase of 4 million oil barrels over five years. ZhenHua plans to pay SOMO $2 billion up front, enough to significantly boost Iraq’s depressed and crude-oil reliant economy.

​The deal is still being debated in the Iraqi parliament, and newly appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi will have the final approval. But regardless of whether or not ZhenHua gets the deal, all the other major contenders are state-owned Chinese companies, as all have the liquid cash on-hand that the deal’s terms require. A multibillion dollar agreement at such a low point in Iraq’s economy would mark a quantum leap forward for Sino-Iraqi relations.

​The COVID-19 pandemic and March’s subsequent oil price crash has led to Iraq’s economy contracting by 12 percent — more than any other OPEC country — this year. In Iraq, crude oil exports account for most of the government’s annual income.

​And despite China’s checkered attempts at “greening” its Belt and Road Initiative — including touting an ambitious carbon-neutral 2060 plan while bankrolling much of the developing world’s coal production — China still remains the largest crude oil importer globally, importing $238.7 billion, or 22.6 percent of overall crude oil imports as of 2019. Elected after months of political instability, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi optimistically frames China as a robust partner for economic growth in Iraq, reaffirming the nation’s prominent role in the Middle East’s oil markets.

Top U.S. national security officials agreed on Wednesday on a proposed range of options to present to President Donald Trump aimed at deterring any attack on U.S. military or diplomatic personnel in Iraq, a senior administration official told Reuters.

​The meeting was spurred by an attack on Sunday in which rockets landed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone compound targeting the U.S. Embassy and causing some minor damage, the Iraqi military and the embassy said.

The so-called principals committee group, including acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser Robert O’Brien met at the White House, said the official, who requested anonymity.

A “range of options” would be presented soon to Trump, said the official, who would not describe the content of the options or say whether they included military action.

Engineering graduates gathered again on Sunday to protest in front of the headquarters of the Shuaiba Refinery near Basra in southern Iraq because of the government's failure to respond to their demands to be hired by the oil companies. An earlier protest blocked the road leading to the refinery to prevent employees from entering. Shuaiba is one of the most important oil refining centres in the south.

There have been numerous protests like this across Iraq in recent years. The graduates were in the vanguard of the demonstrators in the October 2019 uprising, demanding a country in which they could receive their basic rights, including the right to work. In recent months, with the increased spread of the coronavirus and rising unemployment, protests have intensified.

On 4 November, hundreds of graduates who had been involved in sit-ins for 120 days organised a peaceful protest march in the streets around the Basra Oil Company to demand jobs. The government's neglect saw the protest grow, and on 19 November a number of graduate protesters closed the entrance to an oil well in an escalation intended to attract attention to their situation, but they were met with complete government silence. Statements have been addressed to the prime minister, the minister of oil, the governorate deputies, the director of Basra Oil, and other companies regarding their status. They asked the officials to keep the promises that they had made.
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Graduates from various specialisations have participated in protests and sit-ins demanding work since the 2003 occupation of the country, following which corruption determined appointments to positions in a deep-rooted quota system. The World Bank estimates that the unemployment rate among young people in Iraq is 36 per cent, compared with the national unemployment rate of 16 per cent. Among these unemployed young women and men who are unable to advance themselves and support their families, there are more than 1.5 million who have graduated since 2003 from universities and higher institutes in all specialisms. Regardless of the drop in the level of education received, they are more knowledgeable and capable than those recruited or employed by the ruling blocs and their militias, among them individuals who are illiterate or have forged degrees. This raises a question about the importance of engineering graduates specifically.

Joe Biden to be lobbied to reverse decision to pardon security guards jailed over massacre

Iraqis have reacted with outrage to Donald Trump’s move to pardon four security guards from the security firm Blackwater who were jailed for a 2007 massacre that sparked an outcry over the use of mercenaries in war.

The four men were part of a security convoy that fired on civilians at a central Baghdad roundabout, killing 14 people including a nine-year old child and wounding many more.

The four guards – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – opened fire indiscriminately with machine guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people at a roundabout, known as Nisour Square.

The killings were one of the lowest points of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and many Iraqis saw the convictions as a rare occasion where US citizens had been held to account for atrocities committed during the aftermath. Baghdad residents who spoke to the Guardian described the outgoing US president’s announcement as a “cruel slap” and an insult.

On October 15, 2003, Iraq began to distribute new dinar bills, graced with the likeness of an ancient Babylonian ruler and a tenth-century mathematician. By January 15, 2004, new dinars replaced the two types of notes that were in circulation. Old Saddam dinars were swapped for new dinars at a one-to-one rate, and each so-called “Swiss” dinar fetched 150 new dinars. Bank accounts and contracts were converted at the same rates, and Iraqi salaries began to be paid in crisp new notes. The new currency became convertible into foreign currencies at market rates.

Iraq’s currency swap was heralded with great fanfare in Baghdad and Washington. As President George W. Bush put it: “The new currency symbolizes Iraq’s reviving economy.”

Not so fast. Iraq has lacked law and order, let alone the rule of law. Without these, we should never have expected the new notes to ignite an Iraqi Wirtschaftswunder. They most certainly have not.
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Indeed, the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and engineer of the Iraq War infamously predicted on March 27, 2003, in front of the U.S House Appropriations Committee that “There’s a lot of money to pay for this . . . the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years . . . We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” Anyone who believed in this nonsense must put great faith in the Tooth Fairy.

Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones

​Donald Trump has pardoned four security guards from the private military firm Blackwater who were serving jail sentences for killing 14 civilians including two children in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that sparked an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war.

The four guards – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people in a square in the Iraqi capital.

The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in 2014, while Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was convicted of first-degree murder. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 yearsin prison each.

The homes destroyed by the Islamic State are still smashed. The group's bullets are still lodged in the sand berms.
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Hundreds of villagers perished here fighting the militants. Many more were displaced in the violence or fled in the aftermath, fearing they would be tarred as sympathizers of the Islamic State, either because they were or because their relatives had been associated with the group.

As the Iraqi government now speaks of shuttering displacement camps where tens of thousands of these internal refugees have been sheltering since then and returning them to their villages, the prospect of retribution back home awaits.

“The Islamic State is gone, and we’re still living in their wreckage,” said Kadhim al-Khazaraji, a local Shiite Muslim sheikh as his gaze settled on a house that had collapsed like a half-melted candle. “If I see someone here who was with ISIS back then, I will kill them. They killed my family.”

With budgets already stretched thin, Iraq’s budget is being taxed even more by its policy of flaring natural gas while paying high prices to import natural gas from Iran.

The process of flaring natural gas—a byproduct of oil production—is controversial on climate grounds. Flaring is the process of burning this natural gas, and is employed when it doesn’t make economic or practical sense for oil companies to capture the natural gas and sell it.

But the spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity, Ahmed Moussa, said that paying high prices for gas from Iran in large quantities for the purpose of generating electric power “constitutes a major defect,” according to Shafaq.
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Moussa proposes instead that the Parliamentary Oil and Energy Committee move to take advantage of local gas instead of paying high prices for Iran’s.