A very large crude carrier (VLCC) with a deadweight tonnage of 300,000 tonnes, equipped with a bionic skin propeller inspired by dolphins and sharks, completed three oil transport journeys during testing, sailing over 200 days and about 35,000 nautical miles between Chinese and Middle Eastern ports.

The trial showed a 2% decrease in fuel consumption, saving over 300 tons of fuel annually, equivalent to a reduction of 900 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and an economic benefit of around €128,000 to €140,000 annually.

The artificial propeller cover was created by researchers from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The bionic skin mimics the structure of dolphin skin to reduce turbulence and create mini whirlpool currents that minimize water flow energy, allowing for smooth sailing and minimizing turbulence, similar to how dolphins move effortlessly.

The cost of integrating this bionic skin onto a propeller is estimated at around €18,000 to €20,000, making it financially beneficial and eco-friendly. The material complies with international conventions on harmful antifouling substances on ships.

Maritime transportation is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Cosco Shipping Energy Transportation and the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering intend to promote the application of bionic skin on over 100 oil tanker ships.

Sources: The Cool Down, Tivi, Mundo Deportivo, Slate, Talouselämä, Tekniikka & Talous, Antara News, Xinhua.

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in his last speech to his cabinet ministers on Monday night that Israel had indeed taken Iran's nuclear archive, as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in 2018.

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"The Israelis took out secrets out of the country and gave them to [then-US President] Trump. And President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal," Rouhani said.

At a widely-reported press conference in 2018, Netanyahu reported that the Mossad had completed a daring and complex operation in Tehran that had led to its seizure of 100,000 documents on the Iranian nuclear program.

Netanyahu said at the time that the documents in the archive pertained to Iran's activities prior to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear accord and shed light on what he called Iran's attempts to dupe the international community about its nuclear aspirations.

On Tuesday, Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi is expected to receive the official blessing of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the presence of a number of local dignitaries, as well as several foreign diplomats. On Thursday, Raisi is slated to be sworn in as president. Several dozen foreign envoys are expected to be present at the ceremony.

Once Raisi, considered one of Iran's more extremist public figures, becomes president, it is likely that it will be more difficult for Iran and western nations to hammer out a new nuclear accord. Ultimately, the decision about whether or not to rejoin a nuclear deal will fall to Khamenei, who has recently accused the US of being untrustworthy. Khamenei has also said that there is no point in Iran rejoining an agreement similar to the original 2015 JCPOA.

Meanwhile, as a number of western powers are accusing Iran of responsibility for a drone attack on an Israeli-operated ship in the Arabia Sea last week, Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said Monday that Israel "sent people to our oil tankers to blow them up. 12 of our tankers have been bombed or damaged."

The New York Times recently ran a similar report that made similar allegations.

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Syria's foreign minister is blaming Israel for mysterious attacks over more than a year targeting oil tankers heading to Syria, saying they violate international law and will not go unpunished.

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Faisal Mekdad told Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV in an interview aired late Sunday that oil tankers coming to Syria now move under Russian protection. He did not provide any evidence for how Israel was behind the attacks.

Neither the Defense Ministry nor the Prime Minister's Office responded to AP requests for a comment.

Syria's oil resources are mostly outside of government controlled areas but two of its refineries are operating. This makes Syria reliant on Iran for fuel.

US Treasury sanctions have targeted a network that spans Syria, Iran and Russia responsible for shipping oil to the Syrian government, which has been at war for more than a decade.

For more than a year, vessels carrying oil to Syria, as well as some oil facilities in government-held parts of the war-torn country, have been subjected to mysterious attacks.

Vessels carrying oil to Syria travel from the gulf to the Red Sea to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.

"There should be deterrence to Israeli attacks on ships," Mekdad said without going into details. "The Israeli government and arrogant Israeli leaders must understand that these attacks cannot continue with Israel not paying a price."

Last month, Syria's oil ministry said a fire erupted in a tanker on its coast after what it said was a suspected drone attack.

Also in April, an attack targeted an Iranian cargo ship that is said to serve as a floating base for Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces off the coast of Yemen.

A shadow war in Middle East waters emerged in 2019, when the US Navy blamed a series of blasts in June that year in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Iran.

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The regime has been recovering data wiped out in the attack and attempting to "restart some of the computer systems – including military communications networks – [that were] taken offline," the officials told the outlet.

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The US Cyber Command launched the attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in an operation planned weeks in advance, two sources told The Washington Post in June. The attack was coordinated with the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

It was the first attack by the Cyber Command since it was raised to full combatant command in May, according to the report.

Around the time of the cyberattack, US President Donald Trump, who reportedly authorized it, decided not to retaliate militarily against Iran for shooting down a US drone aircraft.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Last month, Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized a British tanker, Stena Impero, near the Strait of Hormuz for alleged marine violations after Britain seized an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar, accusing it of violating sanctions on Syria.

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"We look forward to working alongside the US and others to find an international solution to the problems in the Strait of Hormuz," Defense Minister Ben Wallace told reporters.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said Britain remained committed to working with Iran to maintain the 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran agreed to in return for an easing of sanctions.

A British security source said the focus of the new mission would be to protect the security of shipping, and that Britain would not be joining US sanctions against Iran.

Also on Monday, the Iraqi government said it had no connection to an oil tanker seized by Iran in the Gulf for smuggling fuel.

Iran had said earlier that the tanker was seized by its forces in the Gulf for allegedly smuggling fuel and was in fact an Iraqi ship, the official IRNA news agency reported.

A spokesman for the government department of the Iraqi state company for maritime transport said that the vessel was a "private tanker."

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps seized the Iraqi tanker near Farsi Island on Sunday and detained its seven crew, state media reported. IRGC commander Ramezan Zirahi was quoted as saying it was carrying 700,000 liters (185,000 gallons) of fuel.

In related news, Iran's atomic agency said on Monday that it would further reduce its compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal in a month if European signatories to the deal failed to "uphold their commitments."

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Tanker traffic through the Strait has become a focus for an increasingly tense standoff between Washington and Tehran, into which Britain has also been dragged, and the United States has beefed up its military presence in the Gulf since May.

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On Sunday, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps seized the Iraqi tanker north of the Strait and detained its seven-member crew, state media reported. Guards commander Ramezan Zirahi was quoted as saying the tanker was carrying 700,000 liters of fuel.

"Iran used to forgo some maritime offenses in ... [the] Gulf but will never close [its] eyes anymore," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a televised news conference in Tehran.

"Iran is responsible for the security and safety of the Strait of Hormuz and the region," he said.

Iran has threatened to block all exports via the Strait, through which a fifth of global oil traffic passes, if other countries comply with US pressure to stop buying Iranian oil.

Zarif criticized US sanctions that were imposed on him on Wednesday, saying that Washington had closed the door to diplomacy over Iran's 2015 nuclear deal, which US President Donald Trump exited last year.

The deal with a handful of global powers had curbed Tehran's nuclear work in return for an easing of sanctions, striking a delicate political balance that the US pullout has destabilized.

Strains between Washington and Tehran have heightened further since the spring. In June, Iran's downing of a US drone prompted a US retaliatory airstrike that Trump called off at the last minute.

Angered by intensified US sanctions that were designed to strangle its vital oil trade and the failure of European parties to agree on a way of salvaging the nuclear agreement, Tehran has scaled back its commitments under the pact.

"Iran will leave its 2015 nuclear deal with powers if necessary," Zarif said on Monday, adding that all measures taken by Iran were "reversible if its interests under the deal are secured."

Iran has so far rejected calls by the Trump administration to negotiate a new deal.

Zarif called for improved ties with Iran's rivals in the Middle East, where it has been involved in proxy wars for decades with Sunni Saudi Arabia.

He also labeled as "piracy" the seizure by Britain in July of an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar that London accused of violating existing sanctions on Syria.

Two weeks later, Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized a British tanker, Stena Impero, near the Strait of Hormuz for alleged marine violations.

"Britain has been complicit in the US economic terrorism against Iran," Zarif said.

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Iranian commandos seized the Stena Impero near the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important waterway for oil shipments, on July 19. That was two weeks after British forces captured an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar accused of violating sanctions on Syria.

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"If the Iranians want to come of the dark and be accepted as a responsible member of the intentional community they need to adhere to rules-based system of the international community," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Sky News.

"You cannot go about detaining unlawfully foreign vessels."

Tehran is angered by renewed sanctions imposed by the United States and what it sees as the failure of Britain and European powers to protect it from the fallout of Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers.

Under the 2015 deal, international sanctions on Iran were relaxed in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.

Britain last week started sending a warship to accompany all British-flagged vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a change in policy announced on Thursday after the government previously said it did not have resources to do so.

The Defense Ministry said on Sunday that a second warship, the HMS Duncan, had arrived in the Gulf to support the passage of British-flagged ships through the strait, joining the HMS Montrose.

Raab made his comments on Monday as Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards published footage purportedly showing the Guards warning off a British warship during the seizure of the Stena Impero.

The video, published by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, contains footage of the capture of the tanker, showing Guards abseiling onto the deck from a helicopter, with the audio recording superimposed.

Press TV, Iran's state-run English language news channel, identified the British warship mentioned in the exchange as the Montrose.

"You are required not to interfere in these issues," the Guards' navy representative says.

"This is British warship foxtrot two three six. I am in the vicinity of an internationally recognized strait with a merchant vessel in my vicinity conducting transit passage," a voice with a British accent replies.

"Don't put your life in danger," the Guards navy representative says.

In another interview on Monday, with BBC radio, Raab said that the two seizures of ships were not equivalent.

"Grace 1 was intercepted because it was in breach of sanctions and heading with oil for Syria and that was the intelligence," he said, referring to the Iranian ship seized by Britain.

"We were absolutely lawful entitled to detain it in the way we did. The Stena Impero was unlawfully detained. This is not about some kind of barter. This is about the international law and the rules of the international legal system being upheld and that is what we will insist on."

Iran has said it did not capture the Stena Impero in retaliation for the Grace 1 seizure.

Raab was asked if he hoped for US support for a British-proposed European naval task force to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He said he wanted to see a European-led approach but it would be important to have the initiative have US support to make it "viable and effective."

The Iranian video aired on Monday also contains an exchange between the Guards and the same British warship during a stand-off in mid-July involving the British Heritage oil tanker, according to Tasnim.

Aerial video footage of the warship, recorded by an Iranian drone, is shown during the second round of exchanges, Tasnim reported.

Three Iranian vessels attempted to block the passage of the British Heritage through the Strait of Hormuz but withdrew after warnings from a British warship, the British government said on July 11.

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The most recent provocations began late last week, when Iran announced that it had seized a British tanker. Following the seizure, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani offered a deal to swap the British tanker for its own tanker being held in Gibraltar, which was seized by the United Kingdom on suspicion that it was delivering oil to Syria in violation of current sanctions.

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In response to Iran's continued threat in the Gulf, both American and Britain announced potentially significant moves to counter the threat.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on other nations to join a maritime force to guard oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.

"I am confident that we will all form a collective defense," he told conservative radio host Ben Shapiro. "The United States is calling it our maritime security initiative, and we have asked countries from all across the world to participate in that to assist in the defense of the waterways through the Gulf and through the Straits of Hormuz."

The Strait of Hormuz lies between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

At the same time, the UK Royal Navy announced that it will now accompany British oil tankers in the region. Newly appointed US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has already said that the United States will escort American-flagged ships.

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS that Iran's strategy here is "practicing brinkmanship, threatening to stop the energy flow from the Gulf."

Adding to this, Iran also recently breached the 2015 nuclear deal (officially Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) a second time and brought its low-enriched uranium limit over the agreed thresholdת from 3.7% to about 4.5%.

Iran is trying to "free itself from the limits imposed by the JCPOA," said Inbar, adding that the Europeans "are unlikely to say or do something. It is Trump who must react."

He warned that if Trump focuses only on the economic arena, the world "will end up with an Iran very close to the bomb."

And if it reaches that dangerous point, Inbar said it is then that Israel "will have to decide what to do."

'A Message to the Europeans'

Emily Landau, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, told JNS that she views Iran's provocations in the Gulf in past several months and its violations of the nuclear deal "as a message to the Europeans."

She said that while Iran's steps so far have been "measured," it's a message meant to jolt the Europeans, as well as an effort to get sanctions off Iran's back. "This is Iran's main goal," she said.

"The European response is very important here, and unfortunately, what we've heard so far from the Europeans—despite the fact there was initially harsher rhetoric regarding the consequences if Iran breached the JCPOA—once Iran actually did breach it, the reaction was not significant," explained Landau.

In political terms, Iran's moves are indeed significant, as are Europe's reactions.

Landau agreed with Inbar that the Europeans "mainly want to play this down and not make a big deal about it."

Nevertheless, Tehran sees its strategy is working, and as such, will most likely take it another step further. Europe needs to stand together with the Americans with the understanding that Iran is not going to negotiate a better deal unless it is pressured into doing so.

Landau pointed out that that the Obama administration was under the illusion that after the JCPOA was achieved, talk could move to other issues, such as ballistic missiles.

"This was nonsense," she said. "There was no basis for thinking Iran would ever do that if there was no longer any pressure."

She insisted that "Iran cannot get the message that these [provocative] steps are acceptable."

Pointing to the subterfuge and deceitful games Iran is playing, Landau warned that America must stand firm and "not relent." She said the Trump administration needs to understand "how the Iranians play this game, how they twist things, making it seem there are concessions when there are absolutely no concessions at all."

Landau warned that "this is the kind of bargaining stance that the US cannot accept; it cannot fall for the kinds of games that the Iranians are playing," and it must think of strategies to effectively counter them.

"Overall", Landau said, "things are moving in a non-linear, messy way to the negotiations, but it is going to be a really tough bargain, and I hope the Americans are up to it."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The diplomats aim to examine issues linked to the implementation of the nuclear accord after Iran surpassed stockpile and enrichment limits set out in the deal.

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Iran recently begun surpassing uranium enrichment limits in the 2015 nuclear deal, saying these moves can be reversed if the other parties to the agreement – Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the European Union – come up with enough economic incentives to offset the US sanctions that US President Donald Trump reinstated after pulling his country from the nuclear accord.

Experts warn that higher enrichment and a growing stockpile narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material to make an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

Last week, French authorities in a meeting with an Iranian envoy stressed the need for Tehran to quickly respect the 2015 nuclear accord it has breached and "make the needed gestures" to de-escalate mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf region.

Iran has taken increasingly provocative actions against ships in the Gulf, including seizing a British tanker, and downing a US drone.

The US has expanded its military presence in the region and fears are growing of a wider conflict.

Trump pulled the US out of the deal last year unilaterally, saying he wanted to negotiate a better one.

Under the provisions of the accord, signatories provided Iran with economic sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on the country's nuclear program, but the latest US sanctions have highlighted the inability of the Europeans, as well as Russia and China, to keep up with their commitments.

Iran's recent moves – which it defends as permissible after the US withdrawal – are seen as a way to force the others to openly confront the sanctions.

At the same time, Europe is under pressure from the US to abandon the Iran nuclear accord – the  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA as the deal is formally known – entirely and it also is being squeezed by Iran to offset the ever-crippling effects of American economic sanctions.

That has left the Europeans' soft-power approach strained to its limits at a time of increasing tensions in the Middle East.

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The decision confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court upheld a previous ruling by a local court in the state. Petrobras says it has yet to be notified.

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The oil company has argued that it would risk significant fines if it provided the fuel because the two vessels appear on a US sanctions list.

Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Ernesto Araujo said that all parties had to comply with the court's order, but that Petrobras seemed to remain at risk of US sanctions.

Iran's ambassador was quoted this week by Iran's semi-official Fars news agency saying that Tehran could reconsider imports from Brazil if the situation was not solved promptly.

Iran is the biggest importer of Brazilian corn and fifth biggest importer of meet and soybean.

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