adminThe United States dismissed the Iranian threat, saying it was proof that sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear programme were working. The Pentagon said it would keep sending carrier strike groups through the Gulf regardless.
The prospect of sanctions targeting the oil sector in a serious way for the first time has hit Iran’s rial currency, which reached a record low on Tuesday and has fallen by 40 percent against the dollar in the past month.
Queues formed at Tehran banks and some currency exchange offices shut their doors as Iranians scrambled to buy dollars to protect their savings. World oil prices jumped more than 4 percent.
Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran’s naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned.
“Iran will not repeat its warning. The enemy’s carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasise to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf. We are not in the habit of warning more than once,” he said.
The Pentagon appeared to walk a delicate line, assuring more “regularly scheduled movements” of aircraft carrier strike groups into the Gulf, but stopping short of announcing any special activity in response to the
Iranian threat. “The deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades,” the Pentagon said.
The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis leads a US Navy task force in the region. It is now outside the Gulf in the Arabian Sea, providing air support for the war in Afghanistan, said Lieutenant Rebecca Rebarich, spokeswoman for the 5th Fleet.
The carrier left the Gulf on 27 December on a planned routine transit through the Strait of Hormuz, she said.
Forty percent of the world’s traded oil flows through that narrow straight – which Iran threatened last month to shut if sanctions halted its oil exports.
Brent crude futures were up more than $4 in late Tuesday afternoon trade in London, pushing above $111 a barrel.
Asked at the Pentagon whether there was any U.S. military plan to bolster its presence in the Gulf or test the Iranian threat, spokesman George Little said: “No one in this government seeks confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz.”
“It is important to lower the temperature,” he said.
Tehran’s latest threat comes at a time when sanctions are having an impact on its economy, and the country faces political uncertainty with an election in March, its first since a 2009 vote that triggered countrywide demonstrations.
The West has imposed the increasingly tight sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme, which Tehran says is strictly peaceful but Western countries believe aims to build an atomic bomb.
Sanctions signed into law by US President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran’s central bank off from the US financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude. — Al Jazeera.
Online Reporter