Latest news with #JonathanWALTER
eNCA
14 hours ago
- Business
- eNCA
Military bases or vital waterway: Iran weighs response to US strikes
Iran has vowed to retaliate for US air strikes on its nuclear facilities, and has two main options: attacking American forces in the region, and closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz. An advisor to Iran's supreme leader issued a warning on Sunday, saying any US base in the region that takes part in attacks is a "legitimate target". Disrupting traffic through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil and gas, would send energy prices soaring in a global inflationary shock. Closing the waterway would be "extremely dangerous", Kaja Kallas, the European Union's top diplomat, said on Monday. AFP looks at the two scenarios and their possible implications. - Strait of Hormuz - AFP | Jonathan WALTER, Valentina BRESCHI The narrow, U-shaped seaway snaking between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula is the gateway for Gulf energy shipments to global markets, carrying one-fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas exports. Closing the 50-kilometre (30-mile) wide channel could spike oil to $120 a barrel, according to Deutsche Bank research, raising prices of transport, food and utilities around the world. "It's in the best interest of all Middle Eastern countries to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and prevent any supply disruption," Rystad Energy senior analyst Lu Ming Pang wrote last week. Currently, traders do not appear too concerned. Brent crude was trading at $76 on Monday, marginally changed from Friday's close. "Looking at the oil price this morning, it is clear that the oil market doesn't assign a very high probability of (a closure) happening," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB bank. The big question is whether Iran is prepared to detonate this economic hand-grenade. Despite threats in the past, including in 2011 as oil sanctions loomed, it has not pulled the pin. AFP | Nalini LEPETIT-CHELLA, Omar KAMAL According to a senior European official, the Iranians do not have the means to block the strait "long-term", but they could hamper shipping. But "it would be a form of suicide to do that," the official said. "The effect on Israel would be close to zero, the effect on themselves immense, as well as on the United States, Europe and China." Iranian forces have nearly 200 fast patrol boats that can fire anti-ship missiles or torpedoes, plus mine-laying vessels, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But the US Fifth Fleet, a major naval force, is stationed across the Gulf in Bahrain, and Iran remains under daily fire from Israeli warplanes and drones. Iran's own energy exports, in spite of sanctions, remain an important source of income for the world's ninth-biggest oil-producing country. - US bases - With United States military bases spread around the Gulf countries to Iran's west, there is no shortage of potential targets. Kuwait, in a legacy of the 1990 Gulf war, houses about 13,500 US forces, while the biggest US base in the region is Al Udeid in Qatar. The US Fifth Fleet, covering the Gulf, Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean, is based in Bahrain, and about 3,500 US personnel are stationed at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. In Iraq, US troops are deployed in various installations, including the Al-Asad and Arbil air bases, as part of an anti-jihadist coalition. Iran-backed Iraqi armed factions have threatened Washington's interests should it join Israel's campaign, having targeted them in previous years. Increased US involvement in the Iran-Israel war risks attacks "on US interests, US bases and such across the region", said Renad Mansour, senior research fellow at Chatham House. "The US attack on Iran has now meant that this war is between Israel, the United States and Iran, which means that across the region, Iran may seek to target the US," he added. However, this option is also fraught for Iran as it risks isolating itself from the powerful Gulf monarchies that enjoy good relations with Washington. "Tehran is unlikely to strike Gulf Arab states," said Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King's College London. "Even as it sees the UAE and Saudi Arabia as quiet enablers of the US-Israeli axis, Iran understands that any attack on their soil would likely unify them against it and open the door for greater American military presence. "Instead, Iran may issue veiled warnings to these states, use regional proxies to pressure them, or engage in cyber or intelligence disruptions targeting their interests -- maintaining plausible deniability while raising the cost of involvement." By Talek Harris With Rouba El Husseini In Baghdad
eNCA
5 days ago
- Science
- eNCA
Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
LONDON - From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tonnes per year that is 100,000 tonnes per minute of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update. Earth's surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term our 1.5C "carbon budget" will be exhausted in two years, they calculated. Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80% of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand. Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world. The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was "well below" two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C. With the 1.5C level now expected to be breached in the coming years, "we are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing. "The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen." - 'The wrong direction' - No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data. Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record", and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN's most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021. AFP | Jonathan WALTER, Valentina BRESCHI, Sabrina BLANCHARD The new findings led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy. They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested. "If you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction," said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed's Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said. After creeping up, on average, well under two millimetres per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 mm annually since 2019. - What happens next? - An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimetres (nine inches) over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide. An additional 20 centimetres of sea level rise by 2050 would cause $1 trillion in flood damage annually in the world's 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown. Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth's so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it. So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land. But the planet's energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat. Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two. But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear. "We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made," said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte. The Paris Agreement's 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century's end. Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. "Governments, financiers, and businesses must put this (report) in focus in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil," said David King, former UK Chief Scientific Advisor and Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. "If today's data tells us anything, it's that we do not have time to delay any further."
