Iraq finds alternative to the Strait of Hormuz

News blog about the war in the Middle East

Iraq finds alternative to the Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s neighboring country is moving oil transport by road. Kamal Kharazi was supposed to prepare a meeting with JD Vance – then he was seriously injured. All developments in the news blog.

Iraq has begun trucking crude oil through Syria. Syria will ensure the safe passage of the oil, the Iraqi oil ministry said on Wednesday evening. Exports would be increased gradually, the ministry added, without providing further details. Iraqi oil sector circles said that 178 of 299 planned trucks had so far arrived in the Syrian port city of Banias.

The delivery was brought into Syria from Iraq via the Al-Tanf border crossing, said a spokesman for Syria’s state oil company. At the Banias terminal, the trucks would be unloaded and the oil would be loaded onto oil tankers for further disembarkation.

Iraq is a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and derives 90 percent of its revenue from oil sales. The country has previously exported most of its oil via the water route through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran is blocking this in response to US-Israeli attacks.

In Iran, the destruction of civilian infrastructure has sparked anger and disbelief among government supporters and opponents alike. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghai sharply criticized the bombing of the Pasteur Institute, a research center for biology and medicine in the capital Tehran. “Heartbreaking, cruel, despicable and absolutely outrageous,” he wrote on X. It was not just another war crime, but “a barbaric attack on fundamental human values.”

The Pasteur Institute has been an icon of the Iranian health system and a symbol of modern Iran for a century, wrote Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, on X. Its destruction has no other purpose than to attack the history of Iran, the history of its modernization and development.

US President Donald Trump had previously announced further violent attacks against Iran. “We will hit them extremely hard in the next two to three weeks. We will put them back in the Stone Age, where they belong,” he said in a speech to the nation. This sparked great outrage among many Iranians, including government opponents.