A retired U.S. general predicted that “neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime.” 

Former Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as making the remark. The joint U.S. and Israeli missions against Iran, named Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, are in their 20th day Thursday.

“In my professional assessment, neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime. The main reason is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Iranian religious leaders who can replace the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, if he is eliminated,” Schwartz told Israel Hayom. 

“No matter how many successors you kill one after another, there will always be another one in line. Iran’s intelligence and security apparatus, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Iranian military also have depth. They are capable of replacing the top of the organization if it is destroyed,” he reportedly added. 

IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER MOJTABA KHAMENEI ‘MISFUNCTIONING,’ NOT CONTROLLING REGIME: SOURCES 

Schwartz is a career Green Beret who served in the U.S. Army for 33 years, according to The National Special Forces Green Beret Memorial, where he is the chairman of the advisory board.  

The organization said, “During his career, Mark served throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa,” and, “He has had the opportunity to lead strategic planning and operations working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States Agency for International Development.” 

PENTAGON SEEKS AT LEAST $200 BILLION FROM CONGRESS FOR IRAN WAR 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had warned Wednesday that if the Iranian regime survives Operation Epic Fury, “it will likely seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”   

Gabbard also said the intelligence community “assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region that began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, and continued with the 12-day war last year, resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies.”   

The campaign so far has resulted in the killing of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. 

CEO Saad al-Kaabi says QatarEnergy may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years.

Iranian ⁠attacks on Qatar have wiped out ⁠17 percent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20bn in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and ⁠Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO says.

Saad al-Kaabi told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains, the equipment used to liquefy natural gas, and one of its two gas-to-liquids facilities were damaged in Iranian strikes this week.

The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tonnes of LNG production per year for three to five years, he said.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be – Qatar and the region – in such an attack, especially from a ‌brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” al-Kaabi said in an interview.

His comments came hours after Iran on Wednesday launched a series of attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf region after the Israeli military bombed its South Pars offshore gasfield.

Tehran has been firing missiles and drones across the Middle East in response to the United States-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28.

It also has essentially blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and LNG supplies transit, fuelling soaring petrol prices and global concerns about rising inflation.

Iran’s attacks on energy infrastructure have heightened tensions with its Arab Gulf neighbours, who have condemned the strikes as a violation of international law.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Thursday that his country would show “ZERO restraint” if its infrastructure is struck again as the Israeli attack on the South Pars gasfield continued to spur condemnation.

“Our response to Israel’s attack on our infrastructure employed FRACTION of our power. The ONLY reason for restraint was respect for requested de-escalation,” Araghchi wrote on X.

“Any end to this war must address damage to our civilian sites.”

‘Stay away from oil and gas facilities’

During Thursday’s interview with Reuters, al-Kaabi said QatarEnergy may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South ⁠Korea and China due to the two damaged trains.

“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he said.

QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on its entire output of LNG after earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub, which came under fire again on Wednesday. “For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,” al-Kaabi said.

The damaged units cost about $26bn to build, al-Kaabi said. He also told Reuters that the scale of the damage from the attacks has set the region back 10 to 20 years.

“If Israel attacked Iran, it’s between Iran and Israel. It has nothing to do with us and the region,” he said.

“And so now, in addition to that, I’m saying that everybody in the world, whether it’s Israel, whether it’s the US, whether it’s any other country, everybody should stay away from oil and gas facilities.”

A leader of Ecuador’s Los Lobos crime group was arrested at Mexico City’s international airport, authorities said on Wednesday, in what regional officials called a significant blow to criminal networks spanning Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.

Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg identified the man as Angel Esteban Aguilar, who is wanted in connection with the 2023 assassination of Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a vocal critic of corruption and organized crime.

The suspect, known by the alias “Lobo Menor,” was the subject of an Interpol red notice and is linked to drug trafficking, extortion and homicide, Mexican Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said in a post on X.

Mexican authorities said they tracked him in real-time upon his arrival in the country, where he attempted to use a fake Colombian identity under the name Juan Carlos Montero. Reimberg said he had planned to flee to Mexico.

Trilateral Efforts

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the arrest followed a manhunt in Colombia and was a result of trilateral cooperation between Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.

“This result represents a significant blow against transnational organized crime and confirms the effectiveness of trilateral cooperation between Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico in the fight against multi-crime networks,” Petro said, adding that the arrest was made for extradition purposes.

Mexican authorities said they were communicating with the Colombian government over legal and immigration requirements.

Petro described the suspect as one of Ecuador’s most wanted criminals, with links to Mexican cartels and the leader of the largest dissident branch of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), known by the alias Ivan Mordisco.

Washington designated Los Lobos a foreign terrorist organization in September last year.

The case unfolds against a backdrop of regional tensions over drug trafficking, with Ecuador imposing hefty tariffs on Colombian goods, accusing it of not doing enough to stop drug trafficking around their shared border.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump gathered a raft of right-wing-aligned Latin American presidents to a summit in Florida known as “Shield of the Americas” where leaders agreed to prioritize military tactics against organized crime.

The leaders of Mexico and Colombia were absent from the summit.

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(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Sarah Morland and Howard Goller)