Gulf sets plan for Hormuz closure

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2012 Jan 31

Gulf sets plan for Hormuz closure

Coastguards and naval forces of the Gulf Coopera-tion Council (GCC) group of Arab countries have contingency plans for a possible attempt by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a Kuwaiti maritime official said on Monday.

Five of the six GCC members — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Kuwait — rely on the world’s most important energy shipping lane being open to export most of their oil or gas.

Tehran has threatened to close the narrow shipping lane between Oman, the only GCC member which does not depend on Hormuz, and Iran if Western sanctions aimed at starving Iran’s disputed nuclear programme of funds stop it from selling oil.

The GCC members, which also rely on the four-mile-wide (6.4 kilometre) channel being open to import food for their growing populations, has now drawn up a contingency plan in case Iran acts on its threats.

“Exporting oil or importing goods and cargo through Hormuz is a main concern for the GCC,” Commander Mubarak Ali Al-Sabah chief of maritime operations at Kuwait’s Coast Guard told Reuters in an interview.

“The GCC has a plan as a body — not just Kuwait separately or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia — we have a plan we just hope that everything stays safe,” Al-Sabah said, without giving details of the plans.

“Awareness and understanding of the consequences of it has increased,” he said.

“We have plans how to deal with this but didn’t do field exercises on it.”

Al-Sabah said the planning included coordinating both between coastguards and navies of GCC countries and with Western naval forces patrolling the area — including US, Australian and French navies.

Kuwaiti and Iranian coastguards hold regular meetings on how to manage their shared maritime border, with the next one scheduled for next month.

“We don’t go into politics or speak about other issues just what concerns the coastguards and how we can work it out,” he said.

Oil tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz are estimated at around 16 million barrels per day (bpd), or just under a fifth of global oil supplies.

A new pipeline from the UAE’s oilfields to the Gulf of Oman could carry most of the Gulf OPEC oil producer’s exports if Hormuz were to be blocked.

But even a brief disruption to shipping could stop most of the oil exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Iraq from leaving the Gulf, along with liquefied natural gas (LNG) from leading supplier Qatar.

In December, the US Fifth Fleet said it would not tolerate any disruption of traffic in Hormuz but analysts say Iran might be able to hinder traffic transiting the Strait by scattering mines in it.

“In any navy plan that exists there would be plans for swift coordination to de-mine areas that might have been mined... Or act in coordination preemptively or reactively to prevent Iranian small vessels disrupting shipping,” Christian Le Miere, research fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

Earlier this month, Iran’s foreign minister warned Arab neighbours not to side with the United States in the escalating dispute over Tehran’s nuclear activities which the West says includes weapons development and Tehran insists are limited to electricity production.

Shells

Iran’s state TV is reporting the country has produced laser-guided artillery shells, capable of hitting moving targets with high accuracy.

The Monday report quoting Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi also says that the shell was an “intelligent” munition with the capability to identify its own targets.

The report was accompanied by footage showing an artillery piece firing a shell, followed by an explosion in the desert.

The report does not give details on specifications of the shell. It could not be independently verified.

Iran occasionally announces the production and testing of military equipment, ranging from torpedoes to missiles and jet fighters.

The country’s military has run a program dating from 1992 which aims at self-sufficiency in producing modern weaponry.

Iran could develop a nuclear bomb in about a year and create the means for delivery in a further two to three years, the US defense chief said Sunday, reiterating President Barack Obama’s determination to halt the effort.

“The United States — and the president’s made this clear — does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

“That’s a red line for us. And it’s a red line obviously for the Israelis so we share a common goal here.”

Panetta maintained that US officials “will take whatever steps are necessary to stop it” if Washington receives intelligence that Iran is proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon.

Asked if that meant military action, he said: “There are no options that are off the table.”

Panetta told the interviewer that “the consensus is that, if they (Iran) decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

In a report issued in November, the International Atomic Energy Agency said intelligence from more than 10 countries and its own sources “indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.”

It detailed 12 suspicious areas such as testing explosives in a steel container at a military base and studies on Shahab-3 ballistic missile warheads that the IAEA said were “highly relevant to a nuclear weapon program.”

Iran rejected the dossier as based on forgeries.

The Islamic Republic has come under unprecedented international pressure since the publication of the report, with Washington and the European Union targeting its oil sector and central bank.

In his State of the Union message Tuesday, Obama said a peaceful outcome was still possible with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, but he declined to rule out the military option.

“The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent,” Obama said.

“Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal,” the president declared, triggering a standing ovation.

Extend

Meanwhile, Iran’s top diplomat offered Monday to extend the current visit of UN nuclear inspectors and expressed optimism their findings would help ease tensions despite international claims that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons.

The comments by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, reported by Iran’s official news agency, underscored efforts to display cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency team and downplay the expectations of a confrontation atmosphere during the three-day visit that began Sunday.

The IAEA mission is the first to Iran since a report in November that suggested some of the Islamic Republic’s alleged experiments — cited in intelligence documents — can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons. The current inspection team includes two senior weapons experts, hinting that Iran may be prepared to discuss specific points on the claims it seeks to develop warheads after three years of rebuffing UN calls for answers.

Salehi, attending an African summit in Ethiopia, repeated remarks that he was “optimistic about the results of the visit” without offering more details. He also told Turkish state television that the UN mission could be “extended if necessary,” according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The findings from the visit could greatly influence Western efforts to expand economic pressures on Iran over its uranium enrichment — which Washington and allies fear could eventually produce weapons-grade material. Iran has declined to abandon its enrichment labs, but claims it seeks to fuel reactors only for energy and medical research.

Asian powers — which buy the bulk of Iran’s oil — have resisted appeals to join Western boycotts and financial sanctions aimed at Iran’s critical oil industry.

India’s finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told reporters Sunday in Chicago that cutting off Iranian oil would be too great a blow for the Indian economy. About 12 percent of India’s oil imports reportedly come from Iran, making Iran its second-largest supplier after Saudi Arabia.

The UN team has made no public comments since leaving Vienna, the headquarters for the watchdog agency.

But Iranian media said the team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near Qom, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection from possible airstrikes. Earlier this month, Iran said it had begun enrichment work at the site, which is far smaller than the country’s main uranium labs but is reported to have more advanced equipment.

The IAEA team also wants to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on a weapons program. The team also plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

It remains unclear how much Iran will cooperate or is willing to disclose. Iran has accused the IAEA in the past of security leaks that expose its scientists and their families to the threat of assassination by the US and Israel.

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