Country to benefit from resuming trade with ‘ally’ Iran

PRETORIA: South Africa is looking forward to resuming trade with Iran, including oil imports, once sanctions are lifted following a nuclear deal between Tehran and six majors powers, the foreign minister said yesterday.

Iran was once the biggest oil supplier to South Africa – which is Africa’s second-biggest crude consumer, importing around 380 000 barrels per day in total.

“Of course if sanctions are lifted, that’s a win-win situation and South Africa will also benefit from that,” Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said.

Nkoana-Mashabane said South Africa had never agreed in the first instance with the sanctions against Iran and that its oil refiners had suffered from a ban on crude exports from the Middle Eastern country.

South Africa bought around 68 000 bpd from Iran in May 2012, a month before it halted crude purchases as Western countries pressured Tehran over its nuclear programme. That was well down from peak purchases in 2011.

Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear inspection deal on Tuesday, capping lengthy negotiations with an agreement that could ultimately transform the Middle East.

BEIRUT: The Iranian nuclear deal could help Lebanon overcome the obstacles that have for more than a year prevented the election of a president, parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said yesterday.

The presidency has been vacant since Michel Suleiman's term expired in May 2014. Filling it requires a deal between rival politicians who are aligned with competing regional powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“This agreement could help create the climate that would help remove the complications facing the election of a president of the republic,” Berri, an ally of Iran, was quoted in a statement from his office.

The president is elected by parliament and must be a Maronite Christian according to Lebanon’s sectarian powersharing system. But Lebanese politicians remain deeply divided over issues, including the war in neighbouring Syria.

When the Lebanese presidency last fell vacant in 2007, it took talks in Qatar to fill the position, but only after a political crisis had spilled into armed conflict.

Lebanon’s main Sunni party, the Future Movement led by former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, is backed by Saudi Arabia. Lebanon’s most powerful Shia party, Hezbollah, is backed by Iran.