More evidence of public opinion being prepared for aggression against Iran appeared last week, this time in the columns of the Wall Street Journal with what may have been black propaganda from the old team of Cheney and Rumsfeld. -- On Thursday, the Journal reported that an Iranian official had threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz: “‘We have told the Europeans very clearly that if any country wants to deal with Iran in an illogical and arrogant way . . . we will block the Strait of Hormuz,’ said Mohammad Saeedi, a spokesman for Iran's Center for Nuclear Energy, which runs the country's nuclear facilities and uranium-enrichment program,” Neil King Jr. and Franaz Fassihi reported.[1] -- Curiously, they failed to report where and when this remark was made. -- The statement was immediately denied by Iran, which said that in fact “Saeedi said that he has not spoken about Hormuz Strait so far.”[2] -- But that did not prevent the Boston Herald from using it to editorialize the next day that the Iran’s “cocky new hard-line government” had “raised the stakes” with “a threat.”[3] -- The president should let the “perhaps emboldened” Iranians know that the U.S. would attack “all of Iran’s air force and naval assets” in the event of such an act, which "would mean a war," asserted the Herald (a tabloid that Rupert Murdoch was forced to sell 1994 in order to buy a Boston TV station). -- Iran “has lied for almost 20 years about its nuclear activities,” said the paper, without mentioning that Israel has lied for more than 45 years about its nuclear activities, and continues to do so....
1.
Politics and Policy
IRAN HOLDS BIG BARGAINING CHIPS IN DISPUTE
By Neil King Jr. (Washington) and Farnaz Fassihi (Beirut)
** Tehran May Use High Oil Prices, Iraqi Turmoil As Leverage in Nuclear Talks With the West **
Wall Street Journal
August 18, 2005 (posted Aug. 17)
Page A4
Original source: Wall Street Journal
President Bush says the world is "coalescing around the notion" that Iran must be barred from getting nuclear weapons. But two factors -- soaring oil prices and chaos in Iraq -- are giving Tehran new muscle in its diplomatic standoff with Europe and the U.S.
Iran's role as both an oil producer at a time of record prices and as a player in the politics of neighboring Iraq have made it trickier for the Bush administration to get tough on Tehran in the nuclear showdown. The administration has threatened to seek United Nations sanctions against Iran in the fall if the country refuses to accept international oversight of its nuclear program.
For their part, Iran's leaders seem to sense their advantages. In recent weeks, they have made clear they believe they have plenty of leverage and are less vulnerable to economic pressures from the outside. The country's new, hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently said "no economic or political incentive can dissuade us from getting peaceful nuclear energy."
A State Department official said the Bush administration has noted Iran's "new defiance" but believes it is symptomatic of "a new overconfidence by the Iranian regime in its level of international support."
A diplomatic effort to contain Iran's nuclear program -- led by Britain, Germany and France and supported by the U.S. -- hit a serious snag two weeks ago, when Iran rejected a package of political and economic incentives offered in return for abandoning its nuclear-enrichment program. Iran then resumed work at a uranium-conversion plant in Isfahan -- a step that could assist in making nuclear weapons, though Iran says it seeks only civilian nuclear power.
The restart prompted a rebuke from the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western vows to take the matter up at the U.N. when heads of state meet there next month.
The nuclear standoff comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Bush administration. In Iraq, the administration is scrambling to help the country's factions overcome differences and hammer out a constitution, taking a crucial step toward solidifying the country so U.S. troops might eventually withdraw.
Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, has huge sway over much of Iraq's now-dominant Shiite population, and it could disrupt the constitutional process if it so chose. Western diplomats in Tehran say Iranian officials have been blunt in recent weeks on that point, threatening to cause problems in Iraq if the Bush administration tries to punish Iran with international sanctions.
The most influential man in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite leader whose approval has been central to every political twist and turn, is Iranian. When Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, visited Iraq recently he visited Mr. Sistani -- an audience so far denied to top U.S. officials. "It didn't exactly please us to see the Iranians getting face time with Sistani," said a senior American diplomat in Iraq.
At the same time, oil prices have become a domestic thorn for President Bush, and any move that might push them higher could cost him support. Oil hit a nominal record of more than $66 a barrel last week before slipping slightly to $63.25 a barrel yesterday in New York trading.
Iran pumps around 3.5 million barrels a day, or about 4% of global oil production. It is the second-largest producer of oil in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has the world's second-largest natural-gas fields. Analysts are divided over whether Tehran would openly use its energy leverage in a diplomatic standoff, if only because the Iranian government is so dependent on oil revenue.
Officials in Tehran, however, have suggested that they might move to crimp tanker flows through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, which would have far-more-serious consequences. Around 15 million barrels of oil a day, and a large percentage of the world's gas supplies, flow through Hormuz. The Energy Department calls the strait "by far the world's most important oil chokepoint."
"We have told the Europeans very clearly that if any country wants to deal with Iran in an illogical and arrogant way . . . we will block the Strait of Hormuz," said Mohammad Saeedi, a spokesman for Iran's Center for Nuclear Energy, which runs the country's nuclear facilities and uranium-enrichment program.
High oil prices also have protected Tehran from outside leverage. Not only has the country's economy benefited, but Tehran also has made a successful push in recent years to slash its international debt and to strengthen ties as an energy provider to developing countries such as China and India.
"Iran's vulnerability to outside economic pressures couldn't be much lower than it is right now," said Patrick Clawson, a regional expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Still, some analysts contend Iran is by no means immune to outside pressure. Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution in Washington said the U.S. could get Iran's attention with a push among the Group of Eight leading nations to impose a ban on major investment in Iran.
"Right now, they are fat and happy with the price of oil," Mr. Pollack said. "But that won't bail them out of their long-term economic problems. For that, they need the kind of investments that can only come from outside."
The diplomatic impasse between Europe and Iran has led even some Republicans in Congress to call for President Bush to open direct talks with Tehran, a move no U.S. president has made since Washington cut off diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980.
--Write to Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com and Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com
2.
IAEO REJECTS STATEMENT ON HORMUZ STRAIT
IRNA
August 20, 2005
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-17/0508200434190528.htm
Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) on Saturday dismissed a statement attributed to IAEO deputy director for international affairs Mohammad Saeedi that Iran would close Hormuz Strait if it could not settle nuclear stand-off with the West.
IAEO denied that Saeedi has made such a statement.
IAEO said that foreign newspaper affiliated to certain lobbies have attributed such a statement to Saeedi to misportray the region as a trouble spot.
Saeedi said that he has not spoken about Hormuz Strait so far.
3.
News & Opinion
Editorial
IRAN’S THREAT MERITS HARD LINE
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Boston Herald
August 21, 2005
http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=98937
Iran's cocky new hard-line government has raised the stakes in the dispute over its nuclear program with a threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. The Bush administration must make clear that such an action would mean a war to keep open the oil lifeline of the world.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. Navy patrolled the Arabian Gulf (to which the strait leads) to keep the oil flowing and even sank a few small Iranian vessels. A warning to Iran -- which could be delivered quietly at first -- might well combine a reminder of those days and a caution that the next time hostilities would not be confined to small boats at sea but would include all of Iran's air force and naval assets.
Through the straits pass tankers from Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, carrying about one barrel in every four produced on the planet. If Iran means to include its own shipments in the threat, that would make the flow about 30 percent of the world total. Interrupting this for any length of time would amount to “actual strangulation” of the world economy, as Henry Kissinger noted more than 30 years ago.
Perhaps emboldened by high oil prices, Mohammad Saeedi, spokesman for Iran's Center for Nuclear Energy, was quoted by the *Wall Street Journal* as saying, “We have told the Europeans very clearly that if any country wants to deal with Iran in an illogical and arrogant way we will block the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran has been negotiating with Britain, France and Germany, who with the United States want Iran to give up plans to manufacture nuclear fuel to remove all possibility that the country, which has lied for almost 20 years about its nuclear activities, could some day build a bomb.
Britain, France and Germany should make clear that the oil threat will not deter them in the least from seeking sanctions in the United Nations Security Council if need be.
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