Iran Threatens Military Action in Face of New EU Sanctions
The war of words surrounding Iranian sanctions reached a new plateau today as Senior Iranian lawmakers threatened passive military action should oil tanker traffic be disrupted in any way by new sanctions.
Though considered unprecedented, the European Union’s sanctions unveiled today honor contracts with Iran through July, but new contracts will be embargoed immediately. The EU is also threatening to freeze Iran’s central bank assets. With EU as Iran’s biggest customer behind China, these sanctions cut deep.
In retaliation, Iranian politicians threatened to deploy Islamic warships in order to block Persian Gulf oil tanker traffic after the Western leaders served up their latest restriction in order to discourage Tehran’s nuclear program. The European Union’s punitive oil embargo raises the stakes economically for Iran’s defiance. A member of Iran’s influential national security committee in parliament said today that the Strait of Hormuz “would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way.”
Another senior official said that Iran does have the right to block Hormuz as a form of retaliation for oil sanctions – and furthermore, that closing the Strait was highly probable. “In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran’s rights,” he said.
These new sanctions are only part of a larger problem in Iran. The country is feeling pressure from nearly every angle: U.S. lobbying Asian powers to keep their distance from Iranian oil, a national currency circling the drain, and a recent slaying in what Iran calls a campaign against its nuclear ambitions.
“The pressure of sanctions is designed to try and make sure that Iran takes seriously our request to come to the table,” says EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton, who has put out a call for talks to restore “international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
So what do you think? Does Iran have a right to react thus to increasingly restrictive embargoes, or are they reacting unreasonably?
