Page 46 - IRANRptAug19

“The key issue with the escorts is the rules of engagement,” said Mark Gray, a retired colonel with Britain’s Royal Marines told Reuters.
“The vessels must have the authorisation to fire warning shots, and also, if necessary, target rounds against boats and helicopters. If not, the Iranians will call our bluff and board, even if escorted,” said Gray, co-founder of British company MNG Maritime, which runs a UK regulated floating armoury some 26 nautical miles from the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
The US, UK and other nations will meet in Florida on July 26 to discuss how to protect shipping in the Gulf from Iran.
Big military spending hikes took place in Turkey, Armenia, the Baltics and across Central and Eastern Europe in 2019, while notable expenditure increases also occurred in Bulgaria and Romania, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) . Iran, meanwhile, facing dire economic straits because of the hostility of the Trump administration, saw a clear reduction in the amount it spent on its military.
“The increases in Central and Eastern Europe are largely due to growing perceptions of a threat from Russia,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the SIPRI AMEX programme. “This is despite the fact that Russian military spending has fallen for the past two years.”
At $61.4bn, Russian military spending was the sixth highest in the world in 2018, the figures posted in SIPRI's Trends in World Military Spending report showed. Such spending by Moscow decreased by 3.5% compared with 2017. Military spending in Turkey increased by 24% in 2018 to $19.0bn, marking the highest annual percentage increase among the world’s top 15 military spenders, the institute said.
Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe made large increases in their military expenditure in 2018, SIPRI observed.
Countries with the highest relative increases in military spending in 2018 according to the new data included Armenia (up 33%), Bosnia-Herzegovina (26%), Bulgaria (23%), Ukraine, Romania (18%), and Kazakhstan (16%). Armenia's total expenditure, at $609mn, was 4.8% of GDP, taking its military spending burden to among the top 10 in the world, along with Russia at 3.9 percent.
Iran’s military spending fell 9.5% in 2018 to $13.2bn as the country’s economy contracted and its currency collapsed in the face of renewed heavy economic sanctions imposed by the US.
Military expenditure by the US (up 6.4% to $649bn) climbed for the first time since 2010, with the spending equivalent to 3.2% of GDP.
9.1.14 Utilities sector news
Iran’s Minister of Industry, Mining and Trade, Reza Rahmani, has pledged that the price of paper will be brought under further control.
Rahmani made the commitment on the sidelines of the Tehran Book Fair, IRNA reported.
The price of paper—in common with the prices for every other commodity in recent months under the economic pressure brought about by US sanctions—has skyrocketed in Iran. Newspaper and book publishers are finding it nigh on impossible to continue to put out their titles. Several newspapers have lately considered going digital-only in response to paper supply shortages and price hikes.
Rahmani met with Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Abbas Salehi, who
46 IRAN Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com