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Roughly 17 million
barrels of crude a day flow through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran has
threatened to block the strait if Europe imposes economic sanctions. How
credible is that threat?
Joint Chiefs of Staff says Iran Has Ability to Block Strait of Hormuz
Please consider Iran Has Ability to Block
Strait of Hormuz, U.S. General Dempsey Tells CBS
Iran
has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of
time,” and the U.S. would take action to reopen it, Joint Chiefs of
Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey said.
“They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a
period of time block the Strait of Hormuz,” Dempsey said in an
interview airing today on the CBS “Face the Nation” program.
“We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens,
we can defeat that.”
Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. “would take action and
reopen” the waterway, said Dempsey, President Barack Obama’s top
military adviser.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Jan. 1 on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” that he would use air strikes against Iran
unless the country dismantled its nuclear program or allowed inspectors to
verify that the work isn’t aimed at making a weapon.
Dempsey suggested that curbing Iran’s nuclear work by bombing its
facilities would be difficult.
“I’d rather not discuss the degree of difficulty and in any way
encourage them to read anything into that,” Dempsey said. “My
responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning, to understand
the risks associated with any kind of military option.”
Iran Starts Uranium
Enrichment at Fordo Mountain Facility
Bloomberg reports Iran Starts Uranium
Enrichment at Fordo Mountain Facility
Iran
has started to enrich uranium at its Fordo production facility, the official Kayhan newspaper reported without saying where it got the
information.
Iran will soon have a ceremony to open the site officially, the newspaper
reported, citing the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoun Abbasi. The Iranian
nuclear chief was cited yesterday by Mehr News as
saying that the underground facility “will start operating in the near
future.”
The existence of the Fordo plant, built into the side of a mountain near the
Muslim holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, was disclosed in September 2009,
heightening concern among the U.S. and its allies who say Iran’s
activities may be a cover for the development of atomic weapons. The Persian
Gulf country has rejected the allegation, saying it needs nuclear technology
to secure energy for its growing population.
Iran has pressed ahead with its nuclear program even as international
pressure increases to prevent the Islamic republic from building an atomic
weapon.
The U.S. tightened economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program
on Dec. 31, and the European Union is weighing a ban later this month on
purchases of Iranian crude.
Iran threatened last month to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a transit point for
a fifth of oil traded worldwide, if sanctions are imposed on its crude
exports in response to its nuclear program.
Hormuz Bypass Oil
Pipeline Delayed
United Arab Emirates has been working on an oil pipeline so that its oil will
not have to flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Bloomberg reports the Hormuz Bypass Oil Pipeline
Delayed as Iranian Tensions Mount
A
pipeline that would allow oil from the United Arab Emirates to bypass the
Strait of Hormuz separating it from Iran has been delayed because of
construction difficulties, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
As many as 270 construction issues have pushed back the completion date, said
the two people, declining to be identified because they’re not allowed
to speak publicly on the matter. The $3.3 billion project won’t be
ready until at least April, one of them said. Abu Dhabi, holder of most of
the U.A.E.’s oil reserves, had planned to start exports in January 2011
through the pipeline to a port outside the strait, Dieter Blauberg,
the project’s former director, said in May 2009.
The 1.5 million barrel-a-day link would ensure the U.A.E. can export crude
without risking a blockade at Hormuz, where fully laden tankers exit the
Persian Gulf with one-fifth of the world’s traded oil. The chance that
Iran might try to close the waterway has intensified as Europe prepares to
follow tougher U.S. sanctions on the country.
“That pipeline would carry pretty much all of Abu Dhabi’s
oil,” Robin Mills, an analyst at Manaar
Energy Consulting in Dubai, said Jan. 5. “It’s a critical bit of
infrastructure, and it is remarkable it hasn’t been completed.”
Weeks of Iran tension has added about $10 a barrel to Brent crude prices,
said al-Harami, who was head of crude and products
marketing at state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. during the 1980s “Tanker
War,” when Iran and Iraq attacked each other’s ships.
Still, a closure of the strait by Iran, in response to opposition to the
nation’s nuclear program, is not a “high- likelihood
event,” David Fyfe, head of the International Energy Agency’s oil
market and industry division, said in a Jan. 4 phone interview from Paris.
War posturing by Iran
and the US, as well as economic sanctions by Europe are counterproductive and
have undoubtedly increased the price of oil. The simple solution to this mess
would be for Iran to admit inspectors to check their facilities and for
the US to go along with those inspections.
However, the US has demanded Iran stop all enrichment. The US has no
fundamental right to demand that Iran stop enrichment for non-weapons usage.
Addendum: Atoms for Peace
Inquiring minds might be interested in the origins of Iran's nuclear
program.
The
nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United
States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The support, encouragement and
participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's
nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the
Shah of Iran.
After the 1979 revolution, the Iranian government temporarily disbanded
elements of the program, and then revived it with less Western assistance
than during the pre-revolution era. Iran's nuclear program has included
several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium
processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants.
After delays, Iran's first nuclear power plant, Bushehr
I reactor was complete with major assistance of Russian government agency RosAtom and was officially opened in a ceremony on 12
September 2011. Iran has announced that it is working on a new 360 MW nuclear
power plant to be located in Darkhovin. Iran has
also indicated that it will seek more medium-sized nuclear power plants and
uranium mines in the future. ....
On the question of whether Iran had a hidden nuclear weapons program, the
IAEA's November 2003 report states that it found "no evidence" that
the previously undeclared activities were related to a nuclear weapons
program, but also that it was unable to conclude that Iran's nuclear program
was exclusively peaceful.
In August 2005, with the assistance of Pakistan a group of US government
experts and international scientists concluded that traces of bomb-grade
uranium found in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and were not
evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program in Iran. In September 2005,
IAEA Director General Mohammad ElBaradei reported that "most"
highly enriched uranium traces found in Iran by agency inspectors came from
imported centrifuge components, validating Iran's claim that the traces were
due to contamination. Sources in Vienna and the State Department reportedly
stated that, for all practical purposes, the HEU issue has been resolved.
In late February 2006, IAEA Director Mohammad El-Baradei
raised the suggestion of a deal, whereby Iran would give up industrial-scale
enrichment and instead limit its program to a small-scale pilot facility, and
agree to import its nuclear fuel from Russia. The Iranians indicated that
while they would not be willing to give up their right to enrichment in
principle, they were willing to consider the compromise solution. However in
March 2006, the Bush Administration made it clear that they would not accept
any enrichment at all in Iran.
In Resolution 1696 July 31, 2006, the United Nations Security Council
demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment and reprocessing related
activities.
In February 2007, anonymous diplomats at the atomic energy agency reportedly
complained that most U.S. intelligence shared with the IAEA had proved
inaccurate, and none had led to significant discoveries inside Iran.
In late October 2007, according to the International Herald Tribune, the head
of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, stated that he had seen "no
evidence" of Iran developing nuclear weapons. The IHT quoted ElBaradei
as saying "We have information that there has
been maybe some studies about possible weaponization.
That's why we have said that we cannot give Iran a pass right now, because
there is still a lot of question marks ... . But
have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a
weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization
program? No." The IHT report went on to say that "ElBaradei said he
was worried about the growing rhetoric from the U.S., which he noted focused on Iran's alleged intentions to build a
nuclear weapon rather than evidence the country was actively doing so. If
there is actual evidence, ElBaradei said he would welcome seeing it."
In a February 2009 press interview, IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran
has low enriched uranium, but "that doesn't mean that they are going tomorrow
to have nuclear weapons, because as long as they are under IAEA verification,
as long as they are not weaponizing, you
know." ElBaradei continued that there is a confidence deficit with Iran,
but that the concern should not be hyped and that "many other countries
are enriching uranium without the world making any fuss about it".
In explaining why it had left its enrichment program undeclared to the IAEA,
Iran said that for the past twenty-four years it has "been subject to
the most severe series of sanctions and export restrictions on material and
technology for peaceful nuclear technology," so that some elements of
its program had to be done discreetly. Iran said the U.S. intention "is
nothing but to make this deprivation" of Iran's inalienable right to
enrichment technology "final and eternal," and that the United
States is completely silent on Israel's nuclear enrichment and weapons
program.
The Iranian government has repeatedly made compromise offers to place strict
limits on its nuclear program beyond what the Non-Proliferation Treaty and
the Additional Protocol legally require of Iran, in order to ensure that the
program cannot be secretly diverted to the manufacture of weapons. These
offers include operating Iran's nuclear program as an international
consortium, with the full participation of foreign governments. This offer by
the Iranians matched a proposed solution put forth by an IAEA expert
committee that was investigating the risk that civilian nuclear technologies
could be used to make bombs. Iran has also offered to renounce plutonium
extraction technology, thus ensuring that its heavy water reactor at Arak
cannot be used to make bombs either. More recently, the Iranians have
reportedly also offered to operate uranium centrifuges that automatically
self-destruct if they are used to enrich uranium beyond what is required for
civilian purposes.
On 26 July 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton explicitly ruled
out the possibility that the Obama administration would allow Iran to produce
its own nuclear fuel, even under intense international inspection.
If anyone is being
unreasonable here, it is the US, UN, and Europe. Not Iran.
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