Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that several biggest producers of OPEC and its allies want to continue to add 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily to the market on a monthly basis.

But Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, stated that OPEC and its allies would not need to take any unplanned barrels to the market, as he explained that the current plan was still good enough for the market.

OPEC and its ally member nations are meet on March 2, 2022 to decide on the amount of crude oil which members are produce in April.

According to Bloomberg, Sylva, who spoke at an event in Doha, Qatar, said, “We won’t do anything extraordinary at this time because we are expecting a lot of production from outside of OPEC+.

“There’s no need at all to bring on more barrels than the current plan. We are expecting more production if a nuclear deal with Iran works out (since) there will be production from them.”

On his part, the energy minister for Iran, Ihsan Jabbar, said OPEC would consider growth in crude oil production from non-member nations.

“The market will have more and more oil so we think there’s no need. We will not create any growth to the commercial storage. We will secure all the demand by making the required supply,” Jabbar reportedly stated.

The strikes on Sunday hit “operational and weapons storage facilities”, in response to drone attacks on US forces, the Pentagon said in a statement.

According to the Pentagon, the “defensive precision airstrikes” hit two targets in Syria and one in Iraq. It said several Iran-backed militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, used these facilities.

President Joe Biden would “act to protect US personnel”, the statement added.

The US took “necessary, appropriate, and deliberate action designed to limit the risk of escalation – but also to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message”, the statement said.

The Pentagon did not provide any information on casualties but reports say five militia fighters were killed in Syria.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several more fighters were wounded “in an attack by US warplanes”

Other media in Syria reported that a child had died and at least three other people were wounded.

This is the second round of airstrikes President Biden has authorised against Iran-backed militias since taking office in January.

About 2500 US forces based in Iraq have been targeted several times in recent months by drone attacks and although Iran has denied any involvement, the country funds Hezbollah and Hamas. Since 2009, the US has designated Kataib Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, accusing it of threatening the peace and stability of Iraq.

The free web-based encyclopedia project which contains information on a wide variety of subjects described a failed state as a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

It further added that a state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. For a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy. Likewise, when a nation weakens and it’s standard of living declines, it introduces the possibility of total governmental collapse.

Some countries listed as a failed state include; Syria, Somalia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Liberia, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan.

This is the first since a US drone strike on Iraqi soil killed a top Iranian general, straining Washington-Baghdad ties.

Iraq’s President Barham Saleh met with Trump on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland amid threats from Iran-backed militia groups promising to exact revenge should he sit down with the American president.

It was the first high-level meeting since the January 3 US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad’s airport. The attack provoked the ire of Iraqi officials across the political spectrum and lead to the passing of a non-binding resolution to oust US troops from Iraq.

In response, Trump threatened sanctions in Iraq, which would have profound and devastating effects on the country’s economy if realized.

Trump said Washington and Baghdad have had “a very good relationship” and that the two countries had a “host of very difficult things to discuss,” in remarks to reporters.

Asked whether the administration was still considering slapping sanctions on Iraq, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens because we have to do things on our terms.”

Saleh interjected here, saying the two countries shared common interests including the fight against extremism, regional stability and an independent Iraq.

“And we’re also involved with them in their oil business, and that’s always been very important from their standpoint and from our standpoint. So we have a lot of very positive things to talk about,” said Trump.

Asked whether there was a plan for US troops to remain in Iraq, Trump said: “We’re down to 5,000. So we’re down to a very low number – historically low. And we’ll see what happens.”

There are approximately 5,200 US troops in Iraq advising and assisting Iraqi security forces in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The meeting between the two presidents took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.

It came amid rising regional tensions that spilled over in Iraq after the killing of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, and the simultaneous assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces or PMF) in an airstrike ordered by Trump near Baghdad airport earlier this month.

Al-Muhandis was also the founder of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group that the United States targeted in Iraq and Syria on December 30, killing at least 25 fighters and injuring more than 50. The attack was in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor two days earlier.

“This threat exists,” said the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, at a press conference in London.

She was asked about an article in the Washington Post that claimed Trump had secretly warned France, Germany and the UK that the US would impose a “25% tariffs on European cars” if they did not activate the mechanism for the settlement of disputes (MRD) of the Iranian international nuclear agreement reached in Vienna in 2015.

Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters on Thursday: “This expression or threat, as you will, does exist.” She is in the UK to meet her counterpart, Ben Wallace, to discuss Anglo-European defence cooperation post-Brexit.

Her remarks came as ministers from the five countries with nationals killed in the Ukrainian plane downed by the Iranian military met in London to coordinate their response to the Iran’s handling of the crash inquiry, as well as treatment of victim’s families.

Following the meeting the ministers called for an independent and transparent investigation governed by international civil aviation conventions. With emotions running high over the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ belated admission of responsibility for downing the jet, Iran is likely to bridle at being told how to carry out its own inquiry.

A Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane was shot down outside Tehran killing all 176 crew and passengers. Iran’s handling of the crash led to four days of street protests mainly in Tehran.

Iran initially denied responsibility for the crash, but three days later admitted that it had downed the plane believing it was an incoming US missile. An Iranian national security commission is investigating the episode.

There is concern that some in Iran are refusing to cooperate with the international investigation and refusing to hand over the black box flight recorder. There are claims within the country that the US may have jammed Iranian radar, making it impossible for the anti-aircraft battery operator to have checked the status of the plane.

Trump made his tariffs threat to Europe relatively recently and European diplomats insist they had already made the decision in principle to trigger the dispute mechanism because of previous Iranian steps away from the deal, but had not announced the move in deference to a request from China.

As a result they claim the Trump threat did not push Europe into abandoning its policy of trying to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive.

But the threat is a further insight into Trump’s modus operandi, with Europe – in effect using threats of economic sanctions and the power of the dollar to try to force Europe to follow US foreign policy.

The news will only confirm the view of Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, that Europe is failing to stand up to a high school bully. Zarif met the EU external affairs chief, Josep Borrell, to discuss the European decision to trigger the dispute mechanism, describing it as “a strategic mistake”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, revealed that Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

Speaking on live TV on Thursday, Rouhani said: “We are enriching more uranium than before the deal was reached … Pressure has increased on Iran but we continue to progress.”

Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the nuclear deal in retaliation to Washington’s withdrawal from the pact in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in part because it did not address Iran’s support for armed groups across the region and its ballistic missile programme.

Iran continued to abide by the agreement until last summer, when it began openly breaching some of its limits, saying it would not be bound by the deal if it saw none of its promised economic benefits.

After the airstrike on 3 January that killed Gen Qassem Suleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military operations, Iran said it would abandon all restrictions in the nuclear deal.

Still, 51% say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the nation’s policy toward Iran while 43% approve – a divide that’s similar to the President’s overall approval rating in this poll (43% approve to 52% disapprove).

Here are some more key findings:

45%, say Soleimani’s killing has made Americans less safe, while 32% say it has made the U.S. safer and 18% say it had no impact on Americans’ safety.

Voters are split over the decision to send more troops to the Middle East after Soleimani’s death — 44% approve, 46% disapprove. But most, 58%, say they think the tensions between the US and Iran will not lead to war, 29% say they will.

About two-thirds, or 64%, say they would oppose going to war with Iran, though a majority of Republicans — 55% — say they would support it.

Protests began Saturday at two universities in Iran, as Iranians gathered to mourn the 176 lives lost on Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, which the Iranian government admitted to accidentally shooting down early Saturday. That flight contained 82 Iranian citizens; Iran initially blamed its crashing on a technical error, calling US and Canadian claims that it had been shot down “lies.”

Angered over the Iranian government’s apparent attempt to hide the accidental killing of civilians, mourners in the crowd turned hostile, chanting anti-regime slogans and tearing up pictures of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike on January 3.

Ahead of shooting down the plane, Iran responded to Soleimani’s death with missile strikes on US positions in Iraq; the government said “human error” led to military officials mistaking the aircraft for an enemy plane in the wake of those strikes.

At the protests, Iranians chanted “commander-in-chief resign,” referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and “death to liars.” Some also chanted, “They are lying that our enemy is America, our enemy is right here.”

Flanked by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Vice President Mike Pence, Trump confirmed that an Iranian missile attack on US forces late Tuesday did not result in any American casualties and said Iran “appears to be standing down.”

Iran launched more than 20 missiles at two US-occupied Iraqi bases in response to Soleimani’s killing.

“I’m pleased to inform you, the American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime,” Trump said. He added that there was only minimal damage to the installations.

Following Trump’s speech, a host of right-wing media figures and pundits lauded the president for what they said was his de-escalation of the conflict with Iran. A “straight news” anchor on Fox suggested those who’ve criticized Trump’s escalation with Iran are “deranged.”

“There’s this sense that the president doesn’t get credit when something goes right,” Fox host Bret Baier said Wednesday. “You wonder whether Trump derangement syndrome factors in to some of the responses you hear here in Washington.”

But they seemed to ignore the fact that Trump’s own actions were what prompted tensions between the US and Iran to go from hot to boiling in a matter of days.

Trump’s decision to order Soleimani’s assassination was almost universally condemned after it was publicly announced.

Among the first to react was the United Kingdom, historically the United States’ closest ally.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said in a statement on Friday that conflict with Iran “is in none of our interests” and urged “all parties to de-escalate.”

Other UK leaders also criticized the US for not consulting it before carrying out the strike.

Tom Tugendhat, Raab’s Conservative Party colleague and the chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC that “the purpose of having allies is that we can surprise our enemies and not each other.”

He added that “it’s been a pattern, sadly, which has been a bit of a shame, that the US administration of late has not shared with us and that is a matter of concern.”

Mr Trump, in a televised address from the White House, said no US or Iraqi lives were lost in the attacks and the bases suffered only minimal damage.

The Irbil and Al Asad bases were attacked early on Wednesday local time.

Iran said it acted in retaliation after the assassination of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani last week.

The US drone strike targeting him and Iran-backed militia figures in the Iraqi capital Baghdad was a major escalation amid already deteriorating relations between Iran and the US.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described the missile attacks as a “slap in the face” for the US and called for an end to the American presence in the Middle East.

On Wednesday evening at least two rockets fell in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where the US embassy is located. There were no reports of any damage or casualties.

The US attack on Soleimani killed members of pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, who have also said they would seek revenge.