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U.S. Rejects Iran's Warning to Avoid Persian Gulf
Jan. 4, 2012
The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis passes through the Strait of Hormuz in November. The Obama administration on Tuesday indicated it would maintain a military presence in the Persian Gulf, despite a warning by Tehran against deploying aircraft carriers in the region (AP Photo/U.S. Navy).
The United States on Tuesday rejected a call by Iran's army head not to deploy aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, attributing Tehran's demand to U.S. economic penalties targeting its disputed nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see
GSN, Jan. 3).
Iranian Gen. Ataollah Salehi issued the cautionary remarks after Washington late last week finalized new sanctions against Iran's petroleum earnings. Tehran, which wrapped up a 10-day naval drill on Tuesday, has separately hinted it could retaliate against U.S. punitive measures by halting traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for the transfer of oil out of the Middle East.
The United States, though, indicated the statements would not affect its policies or placement of defense assets. The aircraft carrier
USS John C. Stennis last week departed from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
"It's the latest round of Iranian threats and is confirmation that Tehran is under increasing pressure for its continued failure to live up to its international obligations," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Washington and other governments suspect Iranian atomic activities are aimed at weapons development, a suspicion Iran has denied.
"Iran is isolated and is seeking to divert attention from its behavior and domestic problems," the spokesman said (Bradley Klapper, Associated Press/
Google News, Jan. 3). Salehi's warning "reflects the fact that Iran is in a position of weakness," Reuters quoted him as saying (Matt Spetalnick,
Reuters I, Jan. 3).
Defense Department spokesman George Little said the U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf complies with international legal norms and aims to safeguard the movement of goods through the area, AP reported.
"The deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades," Little said in released remarks. "These are regularly scheduled movements in accordance with our longstanding commitments to the security and stability of the region and in support of ongoing operations."
The spokesman avoided specifying if Washington would deploy additional Navy forces to the region over Iran's hints of potentially blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
"No one in this government seeks confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz," Little said in response to a question. "It's important to lower the temperature."
An effort to halt movement through the strait would not be accepted, the official said, providing no further detail.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States would assert the freedom of movement for U.S. ships in international waters (Klapper, Associated Press).
“Frankly, we see these threats from Tehran as just increasing evidence that the international pressure is beginning to bite there and that they are feeling increasingly isolated and they are trying to divert the attention of their own public from the difficulties inside Iran, including the economic difficulties as a result of the sanctions,” the
Washington Times quoted her as saying.
“I also … take note of the fact that there seems to have been a significant drop in the Iranian currency, and that’s, you know, among the measures of how these sanctions are biting on the country" (Rowan Scarborough,
Washington Times, Jan. 4).
Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Wednesday reaffirmed his country's cautionary statements over U.S. naval deployments, Agence France-Presse reported.
"Iran will do anything to preserve the security of the Strait of Hormuz," state media quoted Vahidi as saying. "The presence of forces from beyond the (Gulf) region has no result but turbulence. We have said the presence of forces from beyond the region in the Persian Gulf is not needed and is harmful" (Marc Burleigh, Agence France-Presse I/
Daily Star, Jan. 4).
Iranian legislators are preparing a measure to restrict access to the strait by military warships, the nation's Fars News Agency quoted a lawmaker as saying.
""If the military vessels and warships of any country want to pass via the Strait of Hormuz without coordination and permission of Iran's navy forces, they should be stopped by the Iranian armed forces," Nader Qazipour stated (
Fars News Agency, Jan. 4).
One high-level U.S. government insider said Iran's warnings cannot be completely discounted, the
Times reported on Wednesday.
“This may very well be Iranian rhetoric, but we can’t treat it as simple rhetoric,” the unidentified official said. “We have to take threats from the Iranians seriously, even if we don’t think they’ll necessarily follow through on them. The United States wouldn’t tolerate the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Former CIA expert Larry Johnson referred to a high degree of consensus among U.S. lawmakers in approving more stringent penalties against Iran than President Obama had pursued.
“If you are an Iranian intelligence analyst monitoring what the United States is saying, across the board there appears to be widespread support from the top of the political leadership on both sides for pursuing military action against Iran if there is a perceived movement toward developing nuclear weapons,” Johnson said.
Iran’s threat “accompanies the increased amount of rhetoric out of the United States, and they see the global effort to impose sanctions on them. I think it’s a natural reaction,” the expert said.
Iran would take steps to block the Strait of Hormuz solely in retaliation to a Western move it interpreted as an act of overt aggression, he said.
“Iran is not going to take any initiative unless they are backed into a corner," Johnson said. “And being backed into a corner means if oil sanctions are fully put in place. If they can really no longer export and collect revenues from their oil, then under those circumstances, yes, I can see making an effort to block the Strait of Hormuz.”
Still, an Iranian obstruction of the waterway would be short-lived, he said.
"Some of our analysts say the [U.S.] 5th Fleet could open it in a heartbeat. Well, maybe yes, maybe no,” he said.
Iran's warnings could serve to dissuade European powers from taking new steps against Tehran, said James Phillips, a Middle East specialist with the Heritage Foundation.
"The Iranians are playing up their threats to block the Strait of Hormuz in order to deter an Israeli or U.S. preventive attack on their nuclear program, dissuade the Europeans from imposing more sanctions and push up the price of oil, their foremost export, in nervous world oil markets,” Phillips said.
Still, “if the strait is closed, Iran actually would be one of the biggest losers,” the expert said. “Virtually all of its exports must be shipped through the strait, but Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait have access to pipelines through which they can export oil through the Red Sea or through Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea."
“Tehran would only try to close the strait as a last resort in the event that its own oil exports already were being embargoed or otherwise blocked,” he said (Scarborough,
Washington Times).
Former British Ambassador to Iran Richard Dalton said "we should be very worried because the diplomacy that should accompany this rise in tension seems to be lacking on both sides."
"I don't believe either side wants a war to start. I think the Iranians will be aware that if they block the strait or attack a U.S. ship, they will be the losers. Nor do I think that the U.S. wants to use its military might other than as a means of pressure. However, in a state of heightened emotion on both sides, we are in a dangerous situation," Reuters quoted Dalton as saying (Parisa Hafezi,
Reuters II, Jan. 4).
Separately, Nuland reaffirmed a September offer by Washington and European governments for further discussion with Tehran, AP reported (see
GSN, Sept. 22, 2011). The five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany convened talks with Iran on two separate occasions in December 2010 and in January 2011, but neither gathering yielded clear progress toward resolving the dispute (see
GSN, Jan. 24, 2011).
Iran has not replied to the meeting proposal, the State Department spokeswoman said.
"The Iranians know what will be expected of them," she said. "They have to meet their commitments to the international community and they have to be prepared to engage constructively and seriously on a comprehensive solution that restores the international community's confidence in the peaceful nature of their program."
The United States would continue to enforce penalties against Iran, Nuland said, referring to the measures as the "toughest" internationally.
"We continue to look at what more we can do," the spokeswoman said. "It's less a matter of having more sanctions on the books and more a matter of ensuring that those sanctions that we already have are fully implemented by all countries" (Klapper, Associated Press).
The latest penalties against Iran might take an unprecedented toll on Iran's petroleum sector, which comprises six-tenths of the nation's economic activity, according to Reuters. The measures approved by President Obama on Saturday would bar U.S. financial institutions from dealing with entities engaged in business with the Iranian central bank, cutting off the primary means for the Middle Eastern nation to collect fees for sales of unrefined petroleum (Hafezi, Reuters II).
European Union nations have completed an initial agreement to prohibit purchases of unrefined oil from Iran, but have yet to determine the measure's timing, bloc envoys said on Wednesday (Pawlak/Toyer,
Reuters III, Jan. 4). French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for such a step as well as the suspension of all Iranian central bank holdings, ITAR-Tass quoted Foreign Minister Alain Juppe as saying on Tuesday (ITAR-Tass, Jan. 3).
China has rejected calls to curb its economic ties to Iran over the nuclear dispute, but Beijing slashed its unrefined oil purchases from Iran by more than 50 percent for January. China has also pressed for lower prices for Iranian oil as Tehran's pool of potential buyers has decreased in size.
Iran's declining petroleum revenue has resulted in higher domestic expenses for products funded partially by the government, as well as a devaluation of the nation's monetary unit (Hafezi, Reuters II).
China's trade with Iran would not be altered by Washington's latest punitive steps, the Associated Press quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry representative Hong Lei as saying on Friday. The spokesman also reaffirmed his nation's doubts over the utility of economic pressure in addressing the atomic standoff (Associated Press I/
ABC News, Jan. 4).
South Korean government personnel could hold talks with U.S. counterparts in January or later to discuss Seoul's potential exclusion from the new measure's targeting Iranian oil operations, an informed official told the
Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. South Korea needs details on "how much effort do we need to show [in cutting oil purchases from Iran] to be either an exception (to the law) or to get a waiver" by supporting U.S. interests by other means, the government source said.
A Japanese Trade Ministry insider said discussions between Tokyo and Washington could address potential cuts in Japanese oil imports from Iran, but such reductions are not a guaranteed outcome (Min-jeong Lee,
Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4).
Turkey will request that the United States exclude the Turkish petroleum firm Tupras from penalties targeting Iran's central bank, a Turkish Energy Ministry source told Reuters on Wednesday (
Reuters IV, Jan. 4). Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to discuss Iranian atomic activities during a two-day trip to Tehran slated to start on Wednesday, AP reported (Associated Press II/
ABC News, Jan. 4).
Meanwhile, analysts said Iran's reported production and vetting of an atomic fuel rod would not support a possible nuclear-weapon development effort in the country, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
"The (fuel rod) development itself doesn't put them any closer to producing weapons," Arms Control Association analyst Peter Crail said. "[The Iranians] announced the fuel rod production and called for talks at the same time, suggesting the fuel rod is intended more as negotiating leverage,"
Harvard University nuclear weapons expert Matthew Bunn added: "It is a step in the direction of no longer needing supply from other countries."
"But it will be a good number of months or years before it will be at the point where they no longer need supply from other countries," he said.
Iran "still needs to pretend" that it is producing uranium for energy production and not weapons development, said one Western envoy in Vienna, Austria.
Iran would probably still depend for years on Russian-supplied fuel for its Bushehr atomic energy site, said Mark Hibbs, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Even in an advanced nuclear power program with years of experience and lots of fuel fabrication experience -- which Iran doesn't have -- fuel testing could take a decade or more," he said.
The Bushehr site and a medical research reactor in Tehran are not "optimal" for plutonium production, Bunn added.
If Iran succeeds in producing fuel for its still-unfinished Arak heavy-water reactor, though, the nation "will be closer to being able to operate a facility which unlike Bushehr would be better suited to production of plutonium," Hibbs said (Fredrik Dahl,
Reuters V, Jan. 4).
Iran's fuel milestone might decrease the possibility of Tehran agreeing to a fuel-swap agreement aimed at addressing the nuclear standoff, Sharon Squassoni, head of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Bloomberg in an e-mail (see
GSN, Oct. 7, 2011).
Tehran's statement “provides political cover for their continued enrichment of uranium” to roughly 20 percent, Squassoni said. “It has no connection to a nuclear weapons timeline" (Brian Wingfield,
Bloomberg, Jan. 4).
In Washington, discussion of a potential military clash with Iran has increased significantly, AFP reported.
Republican presidential contenders should "begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear program," former Justice Department official John Yoo wrote in a
National Review commentary published last week.
Iran poses an "unavoidable challenge," and a U.S. attack on the country's atomic facilities could be justified under the law, Yoo wrote. "It can argue that destroying Iran's nuclear weapons is a combination of self-defense and protecting international security," he said.
Iran expert Trita Parsi warned such military rhetoric could prove dangerous.
"We are in such an escalatory cycle, if we just continue on this path much longer, we will essentially sleepwalk into a war," Parsi said.
Former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski last month said: "We think we are going to avoid war by moving towards compulsion."
"But the more you lean towards compulsion, the more the choice becomes war if it doesn't work. That narrows our options in a very dramatic way," he said (Agence France-Presse II/
Spacewar.com, Jan. 3).
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