FILE PHOTO: An oil field is seen in Kirkuk, Iraq October 18, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo

US President Donald Trump’s administration is piling pressure on Iraq to allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

An advisor to the Iraqi prime minister denied in a statement there had been a threat of sanctions or pressure on the government during its communications with the US administration.

A speedy resumption of exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region would help to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports, which Washington has pledged to cut to zero as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

The US government has said it wants to isolate Iran from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenues in order to slow Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Iraq’s oil minister made a surprise announcement on Monday that exports from Kurdistan would resume next week. That would mark the end of a near two-year dispute that has cut flows of more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Kurdish oil via Turkey to global markets.

Reuters spoke to eight sources in Baghdad, Washington and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, who said that mounting pressure from the new US administration was a key driver behind Monday’s announcement.

All of the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Iran views its neighbor and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amidst sanctions. But Baghdad, a partner to both the United States and Iran, is wary of being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s policy to squeeze Tehran, the sources said.

Trump wants Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to sever economic and military ties with Iran. Last week, Reuters reported that Iraq’s central bank blocked five more private banks from dollar access at the request of the U.S. Treasury.

Iraq’s announcement on export resumption was hurried and lacked detail on how it would address technical issues that need to be resolved before flows can restart, four of the eight sources also.

Iran wields considerable military, political and economic influence in Iraq through its powerful Shi’ite militias and the political parties it backs in Baghdad. But the increased US pressure comes at a time when Iran has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its regional proxies.

Farhad Alaaldin, a foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said in a statement there was no U.S. threat to impose sanctions if oil exports were not resumed. He noted Iraq’s parliament had already passed a law establishing a price for the oil and it was down to the companies involved to start pumping it to the pipeline.

“Decisions related to the management of national resources are taken in accordance with Iraqi sovereignty and in a way that serves the country’s economic interests,” he said.

CURB SMUGGLING

With the pipeline taking Kurdish crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan closed since 2023, the smuggling of Kurdish oil to Iran by truck has flourished. The US is urging Baghdad to curb this flow, six of the eight sources said.

Reuters reported in July that an estimated 200,000 barrels per day of cut-price crude was being smuggled from Kurdistan to Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey by truck. The sources said the exports remained at around that level.

“Washington is pressuring Baghdad to ensure Kurdish crude is exported to global markets through Turkey rather than being sold cheaply to Iran,” said an Iraqi oil official with knowledge of the crude trucking shipments crossing to Iran.

While the closure of the Turkish pipeline has prompted an uptick in Kurdish oil smuggling via Iran, a larger network that some experts believe generates at least $1 billion a year for Iran and its proxies has flourished in Iraq since al-Sudani took office in 2022, Reuters reported last year.

Two US administration officials confirmed the US had asked the Iraqi government to resume Kurdish exports. One of them said the move would help to dampen upward pressure on oil prices.

Asked about the administration’s pressuring of Iraq to open up Kurdish oil exports, a White House official said: “It’s not only important for regional security that our Kurdish partners be allowed to export their own oil but also help keep the price of gas low.”

There has been close military cooperation between authorities in Kurdistan and the United States in the fight against Islamic State.

Trump’s restoration of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran was one of his first acts after returning to office in late January. In addition to efforts to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero, Trump ordered the US treasury secretary to ensure that Iran can’t use Iraq’s financial system.

Trump also came into office promising to lower energy costs for Americans. A sharp drop in oil exports from Iran could drive up oil prices, and with it the gasoline price worldwide.

The resumption of Kurdish exports would help offset some of the loss to global supply of lower Iranian exports, but would cover only a fraction of the more than 2 million bpd of crude and fuel that Iran ships. However, Iran has proven adept in the past at finding means to circumvent US sanctions on its oil sales.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said the restart of exports from Kurdistan could help increase global oil supplies at a time when output was disrupted from other regions, such as Kazakhstan, where exports have dropped this week following a Ukrainian drone attack on a major pipeline pumping station in southern Russia.

“At this point in time, I believe the market has adopted a relatively neutral but nervous stance on crude oil prices,” he said.

HURDLES TO RESTART

The pipeline was halted by Turkey in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad $1.5 billion in damages for unauthorized exports between 2014 and 2018.

There are still unresolved issues around payment, pricing and maintenance, the sources told Reuters. Two days of talks in the Kurdish city of Erbil this week failed to reach agreement, sources said.

The federal government wanted exports to restart without making commitments to the KRG on payments and without clarity on the payment mechanism, a source familiar with the matter said.

“We can’t do that. We need clear visibility on guarantees,” the source said.

Oil companies working in Kurdistan also have questions over payments.

Executives from Norwegian firm DNO told analysts on Feb. 6 that before agreeing to ship oil through the pipeline to Ceyhan they wanted to understand how the company would be paid for future deliveries and how it would recoup $300 million for the oil it had delivered before the pipeline was shut.

Turkey has yet to receive any information from Iraq on the resumption of flows, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Reuters on Wednesday.

A restart could also cause issues in OPEC+, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia and other allies, where Iraq has been under pressure to comply with its pledge to reduce its output. Additional supply from the Kurdish region could put Iraq over its OPEC+ supply target.

An Iraqi official said it was possible for Iraq to restart the pipeline and remain compliant with OPEC+ supply policy.

Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at investment bank UBS, said the overall impact of the resumption could be muted.

“From an oil market perspective, Iraq is bound to the OPEC+ production deal, so I wouldn’t expect additional production from Iraq in case of a pipeline restart, but just a change in the way it is exported (currently, among others, using trucks),” he said.

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Families and supporters react as they celebrate the release of Omer Wenkert, a hostage who was held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, on the day of the release of six hostages from captivity in Gaza as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, in Gedera, Israel February 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush

Hamas freed six hostages from Gaza on Saturday, the last living Israeli captives slated for release under the first phase of a fragile ceasefire accord, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, all seized from the site of the Nova music festival in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, were handed over to the Red Cross in Nuseirat, central Gaza, to be transported to Israeli forces.

Dozens of militants stood guard in a crowd that had gathered to watch the handover, as masked Hamas men armed with automatic rifles stood on each side of the three men, who appeared thin and pale, as they were made to wave from the stage.

Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 39, were earlier released in Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Hamas-directed releases, which have included public ceremonies in which captives are taken on stage and some made to speak, have faced mounting criticism, including from the United Nations, which denounced the “parading of hostages.”

Hamas rejected the criticism on Saturday, describing the events as a solemn show of Palestinian unity. It later handed over a sixth hostage, Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, to the Red Cross in Gaza City with no public ceremony.

Al-Sayed and Mengistu have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza of their own accord around a decade ago. Shoham was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri along with his wife and two children, who were freed in a brief truce in November 2023.

The six are the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be freed in the first stage of the three-phase ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that took effect on January 19. Sixty-three more captives, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, remain in Gaza.

Shem Tov embraced his parents tightly, laughing and crying, “How I dreamt of this,” he said, in a video distributed by the Israeli military.

Shoham smiled, waved and gave a thumbs up to his friends who had gathered outside the hospital where he was taken.

“We’ve been waiting for Tal every day since October 7th,” said Yael Avner, 50, one of Shoham’s friends. “It’s a great relief just to see him there, himself just coming back home.”

Hundreds of Israelis gathered in the rain in what has become known as Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Some lit candles under photos of the Bibas family, whose bodies were returned this week.

In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails.

They will include 445 Gazans rounded up by Israeli forces during the war, as well as dozens of convicts serving lengthy or life terms for attacks that killed dozens of Israelis in the Palestinian uprising two decades ago.

SLAIN IN CAPTIVITY

The fragile truce in the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists had been threatened by the misidentification of a body released on Thursday as that of Shiri Bibas, who was kidnapped with her two young sons and her husband in the Hamas 2023 attack.

However, late on Friday, Hamas handed over another body, which her family said had been confirmed to be hers.

“Last night, our Shiri was returned home,” her family said in a statement, which said she had been identified by Israel’s Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The Bibas family has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day. Her husband Yarden, seized and held separately from his family, was freed on February 1.

The Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel showed both had been killed deliberately by their captors, “in cold blood.”

Israel’s Army Radio, citing the forensic conclusions, said Bibas was likely slain with her children.

Hamas says the Bibas family was killed by an Israeli airstrike. A group called the Mujahideen Brigades said it was holding the family, which was confirmed by the Israeli military.

The ceasefire has brought a pause in the fighting, but prospects of a definitive end to the war remain unclear. Hamas has been at pains to demonstrate that it remains in control in Gaza despite heavy losses in the war.

The terrorist group triggered the conflict by its attack on Israeli communities that killed 1,200 and took 251 hostages.

Both sides have said they intend to start talks on a second stage, which mediators say aims to agree the return of all remaining hostages and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops.

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FILE PHOTO: Defendant Hadi Matar arrives for his trial on charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault dating to an attack on Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, at Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York, U.S. February 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Robert Frank/File Photo

Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed and partially blinded the novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a New York arts institute, was found guilty on Friday of attempted murder.

Matar, 27, can be seen in videos of the 2022 attack rushing the Chautauqua Institution’s stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm, some of which were shown to the jury during the seven days of testimony.

Rushdie, 77, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery.

The writer was among the first to testify at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, calmly describing to jurors how he believed he was going to die and showing them his blinded eye by removing his adapted spectacles with a blacked-out right lens.

Matar was found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree for stabbing Henry Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a non-profit group that helps exiled writers, who was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning.

He will be sentenced on April 23, and faces up to 25 years in prison.

Speaking after the verdict, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt praised the scores of audience members who rushed to Rushdie’s aid when he was attacked.

“The Chautauqua Institution community, which I believe saved Mr. Rushdie’s life when they intervened, I would say to you that this entire community deserved swift justice here, and I’m glad that we were able to achieve that for them.”

Nathaniel Barone, a public defender representing Matar, said his client was disappointed by the verdict.

“The video, I think, was extremely damaging to Mr. Matar,” Barone said outside the courtroom, referring to video of the attack that was shown repeatedly to jurors, sometimes in slow motion. “It’s that old expression, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Rushdie, an atheist born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, denounced as blasphemous.

After the knife assault, Matar told the New York Post that he had traveled from his home in New Jersey after seeing the Rushdie event advertised because he disliked the novelist, saying Rushdie had attacked Islam.

Matar, a dual citizen of his native US and Lebanon, said in the interview that he was surprised Rushdie had survived, the Post reported.

Matar did not testify at his trial. His defense lawyers told jurors that the prosecutors had not proved beyond reasonable doubt the necessary criminal intent to kill needed for a conviction of attempted murder, and argued that he should have been charged with assault.

Matar also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organization.

Matar is due to face those charges at a separate trial in Buffalo.

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