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Counter-terrorism police have raided a home in western Germany after a man was suspected of preparing a terrorist attack with cyanide and ricin, officials say. The man was taken into custody. The operation took place on late Saturday night, just before midnight, when a heavily-armed team with protective clothing raided an apartment in Castrop-Rauxel, a small city in North Rhine-Westphalia. “The residence of a 32-year-old suspect, who is an Iranian citizen, was searched by order of a judge,” police said in a statement. “The accused is suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence endangering the state by procuring...

Last month, when Trump dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Persian Gulf region, it was reportedly the Israeli Mossad that tipped off the U.S. “on an Iranian plan to attack either a US or a US-allied target.”If so, the warning has already been borne out as just a week later Iran—trying to bully and threaten its way out of the Trump administration’s economic chokehold—attacked Norwegian, Emirati, and Saudi oil tankers, and last week attacked a Japanese and a Norwegian oil tanker.It’s not the first time Israeli intelligence has warned of impending attacks by Iran or...

Iraq’s security forces have found mass graves inside oil wells in an area in northeastern Iraq close to the oil-rich Kirkuk, and they believe the bodies are of civilians executed by ISIS, a security source told local media on Monday. Iraq will now collect DNA samples to identify the victims, the security source told The Baghdad Post. This is not the first time a mass grave has been uncovered by Iraqi forces who have recaptured almost all of Iraq’s territory formerly held by ISIS militants.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) were a major driver of the rally in oil markets over the past several months, as the outage of roughly 600,000 barrels per day helped push up crude oil prices. In June, a 30-day ceasefire between the NDA and the Nigerian government led to a few weeks of relative calm, and Nigeria’s oil minister said that the country was able to bring back a large chunk of the disrupted supply, bringing output up from 1.4 million barrels per day to 1.9 mb/d at the end of June, but still down from the 2.2 mb/d Nigeria...

Shell has evacuated nearly 100 essential oil personnel from a major production facility in the Niger Delta, following a series of attacks from a newly formed militant group that has vowed to renew the fight abandoned after a 2009 amnesty deal. Some 98 Shell personnel were airlifted from the Shell-operated Eja Oml 79 oil production facility in the Niger Delta over the weekend, bringing into question the facility’s 90,000 barrel-per-day production capacity. The facility is run by Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Corporation). The evacuations come after militants of the Niger Delta Avengers attacked an offline oil platform...

Situation in Nigeria For a country that produced nearly 2.4 million barrels of oil (NYSEARCA:USO) per day just a few months ago, Nigeria is facing some really serious issues. A militant group called the Niger Delta has disrupted the country's 2.4 million b/d of production by blowing up pipelines, hassling producers, and threatening to destroy additional oil producing facilities. As a result, Nigeria's oil production has fallen from 2.4 million b/d to 1.4 million b/d and further pressuring a growing nation more and more reliant on its oil as revenue. Nigeria is a fast growing country. Its economy is the...

In an early Wednesday attack, Niger Delta militants have blown up two Chevron oil wells in Warri, leading a shut down in the wells and promising further output drops for Nigeria. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have claimed responsibility for the attack via their Twitter feed, not that they “blew up Chevron oil well RMP 23 and 24 [at] 3:44 am this morning.” These are Chevron’s Bibi oil wells, run by Chevron Nigeria Limited. The militant group also noted that it had a “heavy presence of 100 gunboats, 4 warships and jet bombers,” and that the attack was meant “to...

A militant group has however since February 2016 been making headlines through their capacity to destroy oil infrastructure. Their attacks have driven Nigeria’s oil output to near a 22-year low. Contrary to popular opinion, the group, Niger Delta Avengers, NDA for short, according to them is not just made up of Niger Deltans but has support from other parts of Nigeria, namely Northern, Western and Eastern part of the Country with the sole purpose of crippling the Nigerian Economy until their demands are met. According to reports, Diplomats and security experts say the group has shown a level of sophistication...

An illegal arms shipment including rockets and grenades discovered in Nigeria this week was loaded in Iran by an Iranian trader, the firm that operates the vessel that delivered it said on Friday. Security agents this week intercepted 13 containers declared as building materials and discharged from the CMA CGM Everest vessel at the country's busiest port of Apapa in Nigeria's economic hub of Lagos. "The shipment in question was booked as a 'shippers owned container' and supplied loaded and sealed by the shipper, an Iranian trader who does not appear on any 'forbidden persons' listing," said CMA CGM, which...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran denied on Friday Nigerian allegations that it had trained militants arrested in Nigeria on charges of planning attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets there. Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said such allegations were "made up as the result of the ill will of the enemies of the two countries' good relations", Iranian state television reported. "Iran and Nigeria have friendly and close relations and despite the vast efforts of the two countries' enemies in recent years relations and cooperations have always improved," he said. Nigeria's secret service said on Thursday it had arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende...

Iran said on Monday an arms shipment sent from an Iranian port and discovered in Lagos was heading to a West African country and the "misunderstanding" had since been cleared up with the Nigerian authorities. "A private company which had sold conventional defence weapons to another country in West Africa had transferred the shipment via Nigeria which raised some doubts with relevant officials," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Iranian diplomat is in Nigerian police custody on suspicion of spying on the Israeli embassy and other sensitive compounds in the capital Abuja, Israeli security sources said Monday. They said the Iranian was arrested on Jan. 23 when staff reported him "staking out" the embassy. Although he carried no credentials, police discovered he was a diplomat, they said. "A digital camera was found in his possession, with surveillance pictures of the embassy and several other international and local official buildings in the capital," a senior Israeli security source said. A Nigerian police spokesman said last Thursday...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

OIL prices edged back toward record highs yesterday as the threat of war on Iran and the disruption of supplies from Nigeria kept international traders nervous. Nerves were frayed further when US energy giant ExxonMobil announced it had pulled out non-essential staff from the Nigeria's largest oil export terminal amid growing fears dissidents were liable to attack the site. Meanwhile, Iran has refused to rule out the use of oil as a weapon in the worsening stand-off over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear quest. In New York yesterday the new main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, rose...

Crude futures rose Monday after another attack on an oil platform in Nigeria and Iran warned that any sanctions imposed over the country's nuclear program could send oil prices even higher. Brent crude for February delivery gained 77 cents to $63.03 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange, ahead of the contract's expiration Monday. Trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange was closed for the Martin Luther King Day holiday. Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it had evacuated over 300 staffers and contractors from facilities in the Niger Delta. Heavily armed attackers damaged the Benisede oil platform in the Niger...

... A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled "Islamic Penal Code", which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against. ...The new law is not yet in force in Iran: it requires another vote in parliament, and then the signature of the Ayatollah. But that could happen within a matter of weeks. "Or," says Papadouris, "it could conceivably be allowed to drop, were there a...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil climbed further on Tuesday as a militant threat to Nigerian oil exports and Iran's standoff with the West over its nuclear ambitions kept the market worried about supply disruptions. London Brent crude for March was up 27 cents to $63.45 a barrel by 0329 GMT, after rising 58 cents on Monday. U.S. light crude for February jumped 86 cents to $64.78 in catch-up gains after being closed for a national holiday on Monday. U.S. crude earlier touched $64.95 a barrel, its highest since October 4. Crude flows from Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, are being...

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship. Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked in Lagos port for a few hours only, unloaded 13 containers and sailed on.

Government report ties Iran to deaths of nearly 200 troops Nearly 200 U.S. troops have been killed and nearly 1,000 injured by Iranian-made explosives in Iraq, according to new disclosures from a partially declassified report conducted by U.S. Central Command and described by sources to the Washington Free Beacon.The number of U.S. deaths resulting from Iranian terrorism were revealed for the first time on Wednesday by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during a hearing focusing on the Obama administration's failure to prosecute terrorists directly responsible for the deaths of Americans.At least 196 U.S. service members fighting in Iraq were killed...