The US, Iran and the Middle East

* In 2007, Chavez’s government took a majority stake in four oil projects in the vast Orinoco heavy crude belt worth an estimated $30 billion in total.

Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips quit the country as a result and filed arbitration claims. Late last year, an arbitration panel ordered Venezuela to pay Exxon $908 million, though a larger case is still ongoing.

France’s Total SA and Norway’s StatoilHydro ASA received about $1 billion in compensation after reducing their holdings. Britain’s BP Plc and America’s Chevron Corp remained as minority partners.

* In 2008, Chavez’s administration implemented a windfall tax of 50 percent for prices over $70 per barrel, and 60 percent on oil over $100. Oil reached $147 that year, but soon slumped.

* In 2009, Chavez seized a major gas injection project belonging to Williams Cos Inc and a range of assets from local service companies. This year, the energy minister said the government would pay $420 million to Williams and one of its U.S. partners, Exterran Holdings, for the takeover.

* In June 2010, the government seized 11 oil rigs from Oklahoma-based Helmerich & Payne Inc.

Iran building new production hall for centrifuges in mountains near Natanz

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has begun to build a hall in “the heart of the mountains” near its Natanz nuclear site for making advanced centrifuges, Iran’s nuclear chief said on Tuesday, aiming to replace a production hall at the facility hit by fire in July.

Iran said at the time that the fire was the result of sabotage and had caused significant damage that could slow the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges...

Militia groups continue to target US troops in Iraq, commander reports

Militia groups continue to target U.S. troops in Iraq, eight months after the bombardment of rockets that killed an American contractor and wounded four American service members in Kirkuk.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said bases in the region had incurred more indirect fire in "the first half of this year than we did the first half of last year," he told NBC News while traveling in the Middle East...

Officials: Iran weighing plot to kill U.S. ambassador to South Africa

The Iranian government is weighing an assassination attempt against the American ambassador to South Africa, U.S. intelligence reports say, according to a U.S. government official familiar with the issue and another official who has seen the intelligence...

U.S. officials have been aware of a general threat against the ambassador, Lana Marks, since the spring, the officials said. But the intelligence about the threat to the ambassador has become more specific in recent weeks. The Iranian Embassy in Pretoria is involved in the plot, the U.S. government official said.

Still, attacking Marks is one of several options U.S. officials believe Iran’s regime is considering for retaliation since the general, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in January. At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. killed Soleimani to reestablish deterrence against Iran...

Sanctions Are Driving Iran and Venezuela Into Each Other’s Arms

Over the past few years, Venezuelans have seen thousands of shops shuttered, with business after business failing under the weight of a massive economic depression and crippling economic sanctions. So it was somewhat of an event when a huge new supermarket opened in eastern Caracas in July. Yet what was even more unusual was that shoppers who flocked to the store had a hard time understanding what they were buying: many of the products’ labels were in Farsi, not Spanish...

Iranian Hackers Can Now Beat Encrypted Apps, Researchers Say

Iranian hackers, most likely employees or affiliates of the government, have been running a vast cyberespionage operation equipped with surveillance tools that can outsmart encrypted messaging systems — a capability Iran was not previously known to possess, according to two digital security reports released Friday.

The operation not only targets domestic dissidents, religious and ethnic minorities and antigovernment activists abroad, but can also be used to spy on the general public inside Iran, said the reports by Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity technology firm, and the Miaan Group, a human rights organization that focuses on digital security in the Middle East...

Justice Dept. charges Iranian nationals for hacking US satellite companies

The Justice Department on Thursday sanctioned three Iranian nationals for allegedly targeting and hacking into U.S. satellite and aerospace companies, the latest charges stemming from alleged state-sponsored hacking.

Iranian nationals Said Pourkarim Arabi, Mohammad Reza Espargham and Mohammad Bayati were indicted for allegedly working on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, to target companies in the U.S. and around the world...