Tehran // Iran may consider Israeli threats of a strike against its new nuclear power plant in Bushehr as bluffs, but Tehran is still seeking to guard the facility, and enrichment sites at Natanz and Qom, with the best possible defence systems.
To this end, Iran is demanding that Russia make good on a long-delayed delivery of S300 missile systems purchased five years ago.
"Russia ? has given the guarantee to the [Iranian] nation that it respects its obligation [by beginning to fuel up the Bushehr plant], so the Iranian public opinion now seriously expects Russia's next step to be carrying out its obligations regarding the S300s," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and national security committee, said on Saturday.
The sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles are capable of striking aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missile warheads at a range of about 150 kilometres and at high altitudes.
Domestic and foreign media have reported that the United States and Israel have been putting pressure on Russia to cancel the deal; Russian officials have been making contradictory statements about the delivery of the missiles since June, when the United Nations imposed its latest round of sanctions on Iran.
In reaction to Russia's equivocation, some Iranian officials have hinted that if the missiles are not delivered, Iran will try to make similar ones on its own.
"We are working on a long-range missile defence system, which, God willing, will reach production levels soon," Ahmad Vahidi, Iran's defence minister, said last week.
"Regulations of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] and international laws prohibit countries from striking nuclear stations during the period of construction to operation," Ali Akbar Salehi, the vice president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, told state television on Saturday after a ceremony to mark the transfer of nuclear fuel to the reactor's core site. "We don't expect [a strike], but our ill-wishers should take that [international law] into consideration."
Although many hard-line Iranian politicians and lawmakers have repeatedly said the threats of an Israeli air strike against the Bushehr plant are merely a "bluff", they continue to remind Israel and the United States to avoid "making the mistake" of attacking the new nuclear facility.
Israel's foreign ministry issued a statement yesterday that said: "It is absolutely unacceptable for a state that violates international agreements to take advantage of the benefits of nuclear energy." Israeli officials have never issued a direct threat, but because the threat of an Israeli strike is so very extensively discussed in the foreign media everybody assumes that they have. Only last week, John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, said Israel had only eight days to strike the power plant before it was loaded with fuel.
"Some individuals in the country speak of a military strike by [US or Israel], but all this is only psychological war and even the most stupid of politicians [of those countries] know aggression against Iran is nothing other than suicide," the president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday, stressing that the entire world can be turned into "a battleground" if there is any aggression.
According to a 1977 amendment to the Geneva Convention, attacks on nuclear-generating stations violate international law.
The news that the nuclear power plant in Bushehr is about to go online does not seem to have as much concern in the international community as the enrichment facilities in Natanz and Qom. Russia says it is prepared to guarantee that waste material at Bushehr will not contribute towards the making of an Iranian atomic bomb.
"Of course there is a 100 per-cent guarantee, because this guarantee is not one formulated by Moscow but by objective fact," the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told Interfax on Friday.
All the waste fuel will be returned to Russia, according to an agreement between Iran and Russia. The IAEA, the UN's nuclear monitor, will supervise the plant.
The United States has taken its own measures to monitor the plant to ensure nuclear material from the plant is not used towards making a bomb. A senior intelligence official told the Associated Press last week that US intelligence analysts will examine data such as radar and satellite images of the site and watch for signs such as vapour leaving the cooling towers. The images will let them know if the plant is "hot" or whether the Iranians are "trying to siphon anything off" the reactor to any of their other facilities.
Despite acceptance of the Bushehr plant in principle, both US and British officials say the start-up of the nuclear power plant with Russian-supplied fuel is proof that Iran does not need to enrich uranium itself if it does not mean to build a bomb.
"The problem is Iran's continued refusal to satisfy the IAEA and international community that its work on uranium enrichment and heavy water projects are exclusively peaceful, Britain's foreign office said in a statement Saturday.
msinaiee@thenational.ae
The%20specs
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The biog
Age: 19
Profession: medical student at UAE university
Favourite book: The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
Role model: Parents, followed by Fazza (Shiekh Hamdan bin Mohammed)
Favourite poet: Edger Allen Poe
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Bundesliga fixtures
Saturday, May 16 (kick-offs UAE time)
Borussia Dortmund v Schalke (4.30pm)
RB Leipzig v Freiburg (4.30pm)
Hoffenheim v Hertha Berlin (4.30pm)
Fortuna Dusseldorf v Paderborn (4.30pm)
Augsburg v Wolfsburg (4.30pm)
Eintracht Frankfurt v Borussia Monchengladbach (7.30pm)
Sunday, May 17
Cologne v Mainz (4.30pm),
Union Berlin v Bayern Munich (7pm)
Monday, May 18
Werder Bremen v Bayer Leverkusen (9.30pm)
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Recent winners
2002 Giselle Khoury (Colombia)
2004 Nathalie Nasralla (France)
2005 Catherine Abboud (Oceania)
2007 Grace Bijjani (Mexico)
2008 Carina El-Keddissi (Brazil)
2009 Sara Mansour (Brazil)
2010 Daniella Rahme (Australia)
2011 Maria Farah (Canada)
2012 Cynthia Moukarzel (Kuwait)
2013 Layla Yarak (Australia)
2014 Lia Saad (UAE)
2015 Cynthia Farah (Australia)
2016 Yosmely Massaad (Venezuela)
2017 Dima Safi (Ivory Coast)
2018 Rachel Younan (Australia)
Match info
Uefa Champions League Group B
Barcelona v Tottenham Hotspur, midnight
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Squad for first two ODIs
Kohli (c), Rohit, Dhawan, Rayudu, Pandey, Dhoni (wk), Pant, Jadeja, Chahal, Kuldeep, Khaleel, Shami, Thakur, Rahul.
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League, last-16 second leg
Paris Saint-Germain (1) v Borussia Dortmund (2)
Kick-off: Midnight, Thursday, March 12
Stadium: Parc des Princes
Live: On beIN Sports HD
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
North Pole stats
Distance covered: 160km
Temperature: -40°C
Weight of equipment: 45kg
Altitude (metres above sea level): 0
Terrain: Ice rock
South Pole stats
Distance covered: 130km
Temperature: -50°C
Weight of equipment: 50kg
Altitude (metres above sea level): 3,300
Terrain: Flat ice
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Bareilly Ki Barfi
Directed by: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring: Kriti Sanon, Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao
Three and a half stars
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
How to vote in the UAE
1) Download your ballot https://www.fvap.gov/
2) Take it to the US Embassy
3) Deadline is October 15
4) The embassy will ensure all ballots reach the US in time for the November 3 poll
BORDERLANDS
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis
Director: Eli Roth
Rating: 0/5
European arms
Known EU weapons transfers to Ukraine since the war began: Germany 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Luxembourg 100 NLAW anti-tank weapons, jeeps and 15 military tents as well as air transport capacity. Belgium 2,000 machine guns, 3,800 tons of fuel. Netherlands 200 Stinger missiles. Poland 100 mortars, 8 drones, Javelin anti-tank weapons, Grot assault rifles, munitions. Slovakia 12,000 pieces of artillery ammunition, 10 million litres of fuel, 2.4 million litres of aviation fuel and 2 Bozena de-mining systems. Estonia Javelin anti-tank weapons. Latvia Stinger surface to air missiles. Czech Republic machine guns, assault rifles, other light weapons and ammunition worth $8.57 million.