After threats by Iran that it could shut the most important oil transit channel in the world, if Western governments stop it from selling crude, the Amir and other Gulf leaders have sought assurances that Tehran will not follow through with the threats.
“(We) have contacted officials in Iran to ensure that no action is taken to close the Strait of Hormuz,” according an English version of his remarks to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun during a four-day state visit to Japan.
“We have received assurances from Iran that it will not take this step,” the emir said during a visit to Japan, one of the Gulf oil exporter’s biggest customers. “For a long time, Kuwait has been working on providing a stockpile of oil through its global companies outside the Gulf region to ensure constant supply,” he said.
Several Iranian officials have said Iran should block the waterway in response to sanctions targeting its nuclear program. Western governments suspect Iran is trying to make atomic weapons. Tehran denies this. OPEC member Kuwait, which is producing around 3 million barrels a day, ships all its oil exports through Hormuz.
Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned yesterday his country would hit back at any attack by the United States or Israel, firming tensions in the showdown over Tehran’s nuclear program. “We have said that we do not have atomic weapons and we will not build any.
But if there is any attack by the enemies, whether it be United States or the Zionist regime, we will attack them at the same level as they attack us,” he said in a live televised speech to mark the start of the Iranian new year, moments after US President Barack Obama appealed directly to the Iranian people with a message of solidarity.
The comments reinforced Iran’s position as it faces off against the West over its nuclear activities, and as it confronts Israeli and US threats of possible military action. Khamenei, who was speaking in the northeastern city of Mashhad, said Iran had a divine right to retaliate if struck.
“The Quran states that if an enemy attacks you first, the enemy will certainly be defeated,” he said. “This is God’s law. We are not thinking of attacks and aggression, but we are attached to the existence and identity of the Islamic republic.”
He accused the United States and its European allies of changing their pretexts for interfering with Iran, and claimed the true goal was to control Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves. “Once, it is the atomic issue … (another time) it is the human rights issue.
The real issue is that the Iran is guarding its oil and gas resources,” the leader said. “When the day comes that they (the West) cannot obtain any more oil and gas, that will be the day they will have to makes concessions, and it will be catastrophic for them,” he said.
In the meantime, Iran was an “attractive” target for those nations, and they wanted to treat it like “putty in their hands”, he said. “We will not allow them to do so, and they will remain our enemies,” he said. “Those who think if we yield on the nuclear issue then US hostility towards us will decrease, they are wrong. Their case (the US case) against us is not the nuclear program nor is it human rights. It is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is standing against them,” he said.
Separately, Russia warned yesterday that Iran would have no option but to develop nuclear weapons if it came under attack from either the United States or Israel over its contested atomic program.
“The CIA and other US officials admit they now have no information about the Iranian leadership taking the political decision to produce nuclear weapons,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Moscow’s Kommersant FM radio. “But I am almost certain that such a decision will surely be taken after (any) strikes on Iran,” Lavrov said.
Moscow has close military and commercial ties with Tehran and has only grudgingly backed four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons development drive.
But Lavrov argued that Russia was not defending an ally but trying to avert a broader conflict or possible nuclear arms race from breaking out in the region. He added that Israel’s threats against Iran were only pushing other nations on poor terms with the West to consider pursuing their own nuclear weapon drives.
“This happening… around Iran are forcing a lot of Third World countries to pause and realise that if you have a nuclear bomb, no one will really bother you. You might get some light sanctions, but people will always coddle you, they will court you and try to convince you of things,” Lavrov said.
He particularly raised the case of North Korea and its decision to both develop and test nuclear weapons – a move that was never followed by a threat of an attack from the United States. “But we are all behaving responsibly” toward North Korea, said Lavrov. “We are not proposing to bomb North Korea. We are all insisting on the immediate resumption of negotiations and looking for ways to make these negotiations productive.”
He also repeated arguments from some Western military analysts saying that strikes could only set back but not permanently destroy any weapons program Iran might have today. “Scientists of almost all nations… agree that strikes against Iran can slow its nuclear program. But do away with it, close it, eliminate it – never.”
Lavrov’s comments represented one of Russia’s most impassioned arguments to date against the start of another war on its southern periphery. Russia had previously cautioned that such a campaign could lead to a mass flood of refugees to neighbouring countries like Azerbaijan. It has also warned of the dangers of possible reprisal attack from Iran.
But Lavrov appeared ready to drop that argument yesterday by noting that an attack against Israel could also endanger the lives of Palestinians. “I am absolutely convinced that Iran will never decide to do this, if only because… a threat to destroy Israel will also destroy Palestine,” he said. He also went out of his way to strongly criticise Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for repeatedly threatening to destroy the Jewish state. “This is completely unacceptable… and we categorically condemn it,” Lavrov said. “It is simply uncivilised and unworthy of a country as ancient as Iran.”
