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WashPost: "The latest in a series of Iranian threats to block the vital Strait of Hormuz triggered a sharp response Wednesday from the U.S. Navy, although there appeared to be little chance that Tehran would make good on its warnings. Despite threats to close the narrow waterway if Western nations tighten sanctions on Iran by imposing an oil embargo, the Islamic republic needs the strait at least as much as its adversaries do, Iranian and foreign analysts said. Iran, which feels threatened by the presence of U.S. bases and warships in the region, has warned for years that it would choke off the Strait of Hormuz in the case of war or economic sanctions. The passage at the entrance to the Persian Gulf hosts a daily caravan of tankers that transport roughly a third of the world's oil shipments." http://t.uani.com/s8D5Ti
AP: "Oil prices fell on Wednesday, as Saudi Arabia said it will offset any loss of oil from a threatened Iranian blockade of a crucial tanker route in the Middle East. In New York benchmark crude fell $1.15 to $100.19 a barrel. Brent crude fell 90 cents to $108.37 a barrel in London... A Saudi oil ministry official told The Associated Press that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers are ready to provide more oil if Iran tries to block the strait. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. He didn't specify other routes that could be used to transport oil, although they would likely be longer and more expensive for getting crude to the region's customers." http://t.uani.com/tCxY3M
Reuters: "Iran's navy chief boasts that closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic would be 'easier than drinking a glass of water.' Hardly, U.S. analysts say. Iran's navy does not have the size for a sustained physical blockade of the Strait, but does have mine-laying and missile capability to wreak some havoc, analysts said. 'It wouldn't be a cakewalk' for Iran, said Caitlin Talmadge, a George Washington University professor who has written about the Strait of Hormuz. 'If Tehran really wanted to cause trouble, it could.' But the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet is nearby and keeping a close eye on Iran's activities in the Strait. Mine-laying or missile activity would not go undetected and would likely generate a U.S. response... But just making the threats alone can economically benefit Iran through higher oil prices by unnerving oil markets, analysts say. 'Iran saber rattling raises oil prices and that's good for Iran,' Talmadge said." http://t.uani.com/uViQiH
Nuclear Program & Sanctions AFP: "A US aircraft carrier entered a zone near the Strait of Hormuz being used by the Iranian navy for wargames, an Iranian official said Thursday amid rising tensions over the key oil-transit channel. 'A US aircraft carrier was spotted inside the manoeuvre zone... by a navy reconnaissance aircraft,' Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi, the spokesman for the Iranian exercises, told the official IRNA news agency. The Iranian aircraft took video and photos of the US vessel, he added. The US aircraft carrier was believed to the USS John C. Stennis, one of the US navy's biggest warships." http://t.uani.com/u4tnas
Reuters: "The Stuxnet virus that last year damaged Iran's nuclear program was likely one of at least five cyber weapons developed on a single platform whose roots trace back to 2007, according to new research from Russian computer security firm Kaspersky Lab. Security experts widely believe that the United States and Israel were behind Stuxnet, though the two nations have officially declined to comment on the matter. A Pentagon spokesman on Wednesday declined comment on Kaspersky's research, which did not address who was behind Stuxnet." http://t.uani.com/rx2JYK
AFP: "Iran on Wednesday denied a new request from Swiss diplomats to meet with a US citizen of Iranian descent now reported to be on trial on charges of spying for the CIA, the US State Department said. Swiss diplomats, who represent US interests in Tehran in the absence of diplomatic ties, asked Iran on Wednesday for permission to see alleged spy Amir Mirzai Hekmati, said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner. 'This now makes, I believe, the third time they denied us,' Toner told reporters. 'We are going to continue to push for consular access via the Swiss.'" http://t.uani.com/tKp97D
AP: "The mother of an Iranian-American detained in Iran for four months on espionage charges says his alleged confession was made under duress. Behnaz Hekmati says that her son, Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. military translator, was in Iran to visit his two grandmothers and that the charges against him make no sense. In a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday, Behnaz Hekmati appealed to Iranian authorities to treat him fairly and provide him due process." http://t.uani.com/vJOwEw
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to visit Venezuela and Cuba as part of a four-nation Latin America tour in the second week of January 2012, an official said Wednesday. Ahmadinejad will also visit Nicaragua and Ecuador on the trip, his international affairs director, Mohammad Reza Forghani, told the official news agency IRNA. All the countries are left-leaning and share an ideological antagonism towards Iran's arch-foe, the United States." http://t.uani.com/uzcw8f
Opinion & Analysis
WSJ Editorial Board: "So now we know the kind of sanctions that hit Iran's regime where it really hurts. The U.S. and Europe are at last mustering the gumption to target Iran's multibillion-dollar oil industry, and almost immediately Tehran is threatening to bring Persian Gulf tankers to a halt. 'If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz,'' said Iran's first vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, on Tuesday. On a typical day about 13 tankers carry 15.5 million barrels of oil through the strait, which is about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Admiral Habibollah Sayari, who runs Iran's navy, added yesterday that 'shutting the strait for Iran's armed forces is really easy-or as we say [in Iran] easier than drinking a glass of water.' Oil prices had surged after an Iranian lawmaker issued a vaguer threat last week, and they kept rising before falling yesterday. As a military matter, this is mostly bluster. If it struck first, Iran could sink a few ships and do some damage. But Iran is no military match for the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon and the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet both sent that message to Tehran yesterday. 'Any disruption,' the Bahrain-based U.S. fleet said in an email, 'will not be tolerated.' Yet the Iranian tantrum is educational. Iran knows that Western leaders fear the economic and political impact of higher oil prices, not least with elections coming in 2012 for President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Iran's leaders are trying to see if they can intimidate those leaders into backing down. The Western response should be to tighten sanctions further to show such tactics won't work. The episode is also a reminder, the latest in a series, of the Iranian regime's character and intentions. In October, the U.S. said it uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington-also wholly in character for the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. This is not a mature and rational actor that can be contained if it gets nuclear weapons. President Obama promised there would be consequences for the assassination plot, but there have been none." http://t.uani.com/sHvA4a
WT Editorial Board: "The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue to rattle their scimitars, threatening a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Bring it on. Iran is under increasing pressure to abandon its nuclear program. The United States is about to ban commerce with Iran's central bank. The European Union is considering a new round of economic sanctions and joining the U.S. oil embargo against Iran. Saudi Arabia has decided to increase production to fill the gap should Europeans stop buying Iranian oil. In response, Tehran is threatening to stop all Persian Gulf oil shipments. 'If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports,' Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said Tuesday, 'then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.' On Wednesday, Iran's top sailor, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, said his country 'has comprehensive control' over the strait and it would be 'easier than drinking a glass of water' to close it to shipping. His forces are currently in the midst of a 10-day military exercise - called Velayat-e 90 (Supremacy 90) - to test capabilities and requirements for such an access-denial operation. About 17 percent of the world's imported oil - a third of oil transported by sea - goes through this strategic chokepoint. Iran's threat makes no economic sense. Closing the strait would shut off Iran's main source of income and deny its people necessary imports such as gasoline, food and consumer goods. The hardships of a closure would fall mainly on the Islamic regime as the rest of the world adjusted to the temporary and relatively minor oil shortage. Closing the strait makes even less military sense. Iran would assume the role of the aggressor and lose whatever international legitimacy it has. Perhaps Tehran thinks disrupting the regional seaborne oil trade is a justifiable response to an oil embargo or other aspects of economic warfare. There are, however, significant legal ramifications for initiating the use of overt military force in an international waterway. The United Nations could authorize member states to take whatever means necessary to reopen the strait, and even if permanent U.N. Security Council members Russia or China decide to veto such a resolution, NATO or an ad-hoc international coalition could legally take action." http://t.uani.com/tTgmQl
Kimo Quaintance & Bernd Kaussler in The Diplomat: "The most vocal supporters of preventative military strikes against Iran's nuclear weapons program claim that Iran is developing nukes to use them, rather than to deter the United States and its allies from invasion. This inversion of the Cold War theory of nuclear deterrence assumes that Iran doesn't have the capacity for rational choice. After all, as the argument goes, if the Iranians are crazy, then the certainty of national suicide won't stop them from seizing the opportunity to unleash their new nuclear weapons on Israel. A state that believes the end of the world is coming (never mind thinking it has the special responsibility to usher in Armageddon) can't be considered likely to weigh costs and benefits in any rational, self-preserving way. How do these assumptions about Iranian decision-making square with what we actually know about the regime? While, it's true that the anticipation of deliverance and the return of the 'Hidden Imam' features prominently in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches, we also should consider other explanations before accepting his political rhetoric at face value. Since the contested elections of 2009, Ahmadinejad operates within a volatile domestic political space where statements are often designed more for internal power struggles than external audiences. His penchant for millenarian propaganda should rather be seen as a challenge to the authority of the clergy through the manipulation of Shia end time ideology that also conveniently rattles external adversaries. As anxious as the West and Israel may be, most domestic Iranian observers see Ahmadinejad's cries of 'the end is near' as part his challenge to the Iranian political hierarchy, and just one aspect of his seemingly failed campaign to marginalize powerful clerical rivals by undermining the velayat-e faqih (the rule of the jurist consult). So, would Iran continue to escalate a potential crisis or would calmer heads prevail? It's evident that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the entire security establishment define foreign policy objectives in conservative rather than revolutionary terms. A nuclear-armed Iran would project its power and continue to act as the anti-status quo power in the region, but is unlikely to seek war... While there's little reason to believe Iran would choose self-annihilation through offensive use of a nuclear weapon, the issue of command and control presents several troubling questions. Who would have the authority to order the use of Iranian nuclear weapons? How could the Iranian regime assure even itself that accidental or unauthorized use wouldn't be possible?" http://t.uani.com/v0H7af |
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