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Angry coal miners besieged a car carrying Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday after he visited the site of a deadly mine explosion, a rare protest targeting the nation's top elected official as he campaigns for reelection.

The miners, some covered in coal soot from searching for fallen comrades still missing in Wednesday's disaster in Iran's northern Golestan province, began kicking and banging on the armored SUV carrying Rouhani. Video posted online by the semi-official Fars news agency showed one miner on the SUV's roof, another jumping up and down and kicking its hood.

Dear brothers! I beg you wait for a couple of minutes! someone shouts during the video.

Rouhani's SUV eventually nudges its way through the crowd amid the shouting. Another miner rushes up to kick the back of the vehicle as it speeds away down a hill.

The SUV appeared largely undamaged from the incident. There was no immediate word on state media or officials about the miner's protest.

Rouhani traveled to the Zemestanyourt mine and gave a speech to miners and their families gathered there. He acknowledged that as the government, we are responsible for their lives and it is our duty.

Be sure that we will pursue this issue and also your demands, Rouhani said. Those who are guilty in this incident should be prosecuted by a court.

The explosion Wednesday happened after the coal mine filled with methane gas. Three semi-official news agencies have said at least 35 people were killed in the disaster. Iranian officials say they've recovered 22 bodies, and the search continues.

Rouhani's visit comes ahead of Iran's May 19 presidential election. Rouhani remains the favorite in the election as every Iranian president since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself took the presidency in 1981 has won reelection. However, many in the country remain discontented as the benefits of the nuclear deal with world powers have yet to trickle down to the average Iranian.

Oil-producing Iran is also rich in a variety of minerals. Iran annually consumes 2.5 tons of coal but extracts only about 1 million tons from its mines per year. The rest is imported, often consumed in the country's steel mills.

This is not the first disaster to strike Iran's mining industry. In 2013, 11 workers were killed in two mining incidents. In 2009, 20 workers were killed in several incidents. Lax safety standards and inadequate emergency services in mining areas often are blamed for the fatalities.

Since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the country has begun an effort to renovate some of its coal mines. Delegations have visited Tehran from other countries including the Czech Republic, hopeful for contracts.

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Miners at disaster site besiege Iranian president's car - Los Angeles Times

Iran plans to lift its crude oil production capacity by 3 million bpd, Iranian oil ministrys news service, Shana, reported on Monday, quoting a senior official as saying that the move was aimed at boosting the Islamic Republics footing in OPEC and the global market.

Speaking on the sidelines of an oil industry conference in Iran, Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, Deputy Head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for Engineering and Development, did not provide specific timeframe for Iran reaching that increase, which Platts is calculating at about an 80-percent capacity boost.

Iran, currently OPECs no. 3 biggest producer behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq, was allowed to slightly lift its production to up to 3.797 million bpd between January and June, while the two biggest, archrival Saudi Arabia, as well as Iraq, had to cut the most.

Since western sanctions on Iranian oil exports were lifted in January 2016, Tehran has tried to return to pre-sanction levels of output and exports, and used this bargaining chip to obtain an OPEC exemption from cuts.

According to OPEC data, Iran has largely stuck to its commitment for production in the three months to March, exceeding slightly its output in February and pumping below its quota in January and March.

According to an S&P Global Platts survey, Iran produced 3.77 million bpd of crude oil in April.

Nonetheless, Iran is looking beyond the OPEC deal, and has said that it wants to increase its production to 5 million bpd by 2021. Related:Tech Breakthroughs May Save Deepwater Oil

Iran needs a lot of foreign investments to achieve much higher production, but international oil companies continue to be cautious in signing deals with Iran and committing to investments in its oil industry.

According to Manouchehri, as reported by Shana, the NIOC has signed 24 memoranda of understanding (MoU) with domestic and international companies since January 2016.

The Iranian oil company is also considering signing US$80 billion worth of deals with domestic and international contractors over the next two years, Manouchehri said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Iran Plans To Raise Crude Oil Production Capacity By 3 Million Bpd - OilPrice.com

BAGHDAD Just over 10 years ago, Qasim al-Araji was being arrested a second time by American forces in Iraq. The charges were serious: smuggling arms used to attack U.S. troops and involvement in an assassination cell at the height of sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq following the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Now, he heads of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries.

With credentials that include training from Iranian special operators known as the Quds force and time spent as a guerrilla and militia commander, Iraq's Interior Minister al-Araji is now trumpeting his respect for human rights and support for the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against the Islamic State group. But the forces he now commands have a long history of Shiite domination and abuse, factors that partially contributed to the rise in support for IS in Iraq.

Back in 2007, al-Araji was held by the United States for 23 months. He spent most of his captivity at Bucca prison, including long periods in solitary confinement.

Today, at the head of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries, al-Araji laughs off questions about lingering hostility toward U.S. forces.

"That's life," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press, his manner boisterous and unpolished as he shuttled between meetings at a small Interior Ministry office inside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone. "I was their prisoner and now I meet with their ambassador."

Al-Araji's office confirmed that he met with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq within days of taking office to express his support for the U.S. role in the fight against IS and to request additional support for his ministry and forces.

Following a controversial March 17 strike in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians, al-Araji took a rare public position for an Iraqi politician: he defended the U.S.-led coalition and the use of airstrikes in Mosul on the floor of Iraq's parliament.

"My most important goal is to bring security to Iraq," al-Araji said, "and (to achieve that) Iraq is in need of the friendship of the Americans."

Under al-Araji, the Interior Ministry has already received more support from the U.S.-led coalition.

In the fight for Mosul, greater coalition air and ground support for Iraq's federal police who fall under the command of the Interior Ministry have allowed them to take a lead role in the city's west.

The U.S.-led coalition is also training and arming local and border police across Iraq, other forces that now fall under al-Araji's command.

But Iraq's police are some of the same forces who were accused of using excessive force, carrying out mass detentions of Sunni males and routinely torturing detainees in the lead-up to the summer of 2014, according to human rights groups and a 2013 State Department report on human rights practices in Iraq. The abuses contributed to Sunni resentment of central government rule and fueled support for IS extremists in Iraq's Sunni north and west.

Al-Araji, who spent years in exile in Iran, first traveled there as a teenager in the 1980s and was trained by Iranian special forces as a guerrilla fighter to resist Saddam Hussein's regime. In the Iran-Iraq war, he fought on Iran's side. Al-Araji describes his years in Iran as a fighter as formative.

After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, al-Araji and thousands of other fighters poured across the border into Iraq.

"We didn't have any military activities," he said of his first days back in Iraq, "but we were supporting the overthrow of the regime. The Americans didn't understand, we were both working for the same end."

On April 19 that year he was arrested by U.S. forces on suspicion of commanding militia forces, held for 85 days and then released on insufficient evidence. In 2004, following the fall of Saddam, al-Araji said he fully transitioned to politics, running for local office in Baghdad's Wasit province.

But three years later he was arrested again by U.S. forces. A secret cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Jan. 19, 2007 published by WikiLeaks stated that U.S. forces "had good information based on multiple sources," that al-Araji was "involved in smuggling and distribution" of explosives that were being used to target U.S. forces and that he was "also suspected in involvement in an assassination cell."

After nearly two years, al-Araji was again released on insufficient evidence.

"I believe every difficult stage leaves something inside a human being," al-Araji said. "Being a prisoner taught me patience, it made me stronger."

Al-Araji returned to local politics, rose through the ranks of the Badr organization and became a parliamentary bloc leader.

After the fall of Mosul, Badr's military wing closely supported by Iran racked up a string of high profile victories against IS in 2014. In the months that followed, Badr and the group's leader Hadi al-Amiri rode the wave of those victories for political gain in Baghdad and secured de-facto control of the country's Interior Ministry.

Badr member Mohammed al-Ghabban was appointed to lead the ministry in October 2014, but was forced to resign in July 2016 amid mounting anger following a massive truck bombing claimed by IS in central Baghdad that killed more than 300 people.

Al-Araji appointed in January takes over the ministry at a critical time for the country's security forces who are under increasing pressure to eliminate the last pockets of IS control, prevent an insurgency from bubbling up in the wake of territorial victories, and repair their reputation in Iraq's Sunni heartland.

British Ambassador to Iraq Frank Baker told the AP he talks to al-Araji regularly. He described him as an "an Iraqi patriot" who "faces many challenges but is doing a very good job for Iraq and the Iraqi people."

Looking back at his career, al-Arajii says some things about him have changed.

"With my current position comes great responsibility," he said, explaining that because of that he considers the choices he makes carefully.

"But as a person, I have not changed, I'm the same."

Link:
Former US prisoner now leading Iraq's Interior ministry - Fox News

Financial Times

Iraq fears for its future once Isis falls Financial Times Nineveh, Iraq's second-largest province, is rich in oil and fertile land. But its complex ethnic make-up means conflicts, many of which predate Isis, are hard to resolve and relatively easy to reignite. When, almost a century ago, British officer TE ... Whatever Happened to Trump's Plan to Defeat ISIS?Slate Magazine all 7 news articles »

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Iraq fears for its future once Isis falls - Financial Times

By Ahmed Aboulenein | SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq

SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq The Islamic State fighters herded a group of civilians into a house in the city of Mosul and locked them inside as Iraqi forces advanced. Moments later, the militants entered through a window, lay low for a few minutes, then fired their weapons.

The plan was simple. They would draw attention to the house by firing from the windows, then move to an adjacent building through a hole in the wall, in hope of goading coalition jets flying above to strike the house.

What the militants did not realize was that U.S. advisers partnered with Iraqi troops were watching the whole thing on an aerial drone feed. No air strike was called - and the propaganda coup Islamic State would have reaped from the deaths of innocent people was averted.

"We automatically knew what they were trying to do. They were trying to bait us into destroying this building," said U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning. "This is the game that we play, this is the challenge that we go through every day."

The challenge is only increasing as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces squeeze the militants into a smaller and smaller area of Mosul, where they are now trapped along with several hundred thousand civilians.

"There is nowhere to go.... the battlefield is much more complicated with the amount of civilians that are moving," Browning said.

The risks are high: more than 100 civilians were accidentally killed in a single airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in March.

FINAL PHASE

After opening up a new front in northwest Mosul last week in order to stretch the militants' defenses, Iraqi forces say the battle for Mosul is now in its final phase.

U.S. servicemen are visible near the frontlines advising the Iraqis as they advance into the last handful of districts controlled by Islamic State, facing a barrage of suicide car bombs and sniper fire.

Browning, a battalion commander from the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more than 5,000 U.S. service members currently deployed in Iraq to "advise and assist" security forces that collapsed when Islamic State overran Mosul nearly three summers ago.

It is a much smaller footprint than the 170,000 troops deployed at the height of the nine-year occupation that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, during which more than 4,000 American soldiers were killed.

Having extricated U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, the White House is loath to re-enter a costly conflict that would prove unpopular with the public.

For Browning, who was deployed to Iraq in 2008, the nature of the U.S. role is clearly different.

"Whereas before it was me leading fights and I would ask my Iraqi partners to come with me, now... he leads the fight and I follow him," he said. "The biggest difference is that we are no longer in a combat role."

Since the Mosul offensive began last October, the U.S. role has evolved so that American forces are now partnered with Iraqi troops at a lower level, reducing the time it takes them to respond to Islamic State.

That means company commanders under Browning are also partnered with brigade commanders who report to his Iraqi opposite number, Lieutenant General Qassem al-Maliki.

They hold daily discussions on operations and determine what U.S. forces can do to help, which may involve providing imagery, intelligence, air strikes, or ground fire.

The Iraqis also provide human intelligence that the U.S. forces will corroborate in order to identify targets and determine the best approach to attacking them.

Browning lives on the same base as Maliki, commander of the Iraqi 9th division, making it easier to finetune battle plans.

"Everything I am trying to do is try to shape the battlefield for him".

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Isabel Coles and Mark Trevelyan)

CAIRO The Egyptian air force destroyed a group of vehicles that crossed into Egypt from Libya loaded with smuggled weapons, the military said on Monday.

ALGIERS Libya's neighbors and the United Nations on Monday voiced their support for a meeting held last week between the North African country's main rival figures, the head of the U.N.-backed government, Fayez Seraj, and eastern commander Khalifa Haftar.

TUNIS Protests over jobs and development in southern and central Tunisia have halted production at or shut the fields of two foreign energy companies in a new challenge to the country's Prime Minister Youssef Chahed.

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Civilians complicate final phase of Mosul campaign: US commander - Reuters