US Navy rattles Iran as sanctions bite

TEHRAN: Iran threatened yesterday to take action if the US Navy moved an aircraft carrier into the Gulf, Tehran’s most aggressive statement yet after weeks of sabre-rattling as new US and EU financial sanctions take a toll on its economy.

The US dismissed the Iranian threat as 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 has fallen by 40 percent against the dollar in a month and reached a record low yesterday.

Queues formed at Tehran banks and some currency exchange offices shut their doors as Iranians scrambled to buy dollars to protect their savings. On world markets, oil prices soared.

Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the US 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,” he said.

“I advise, recommend and warn them over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once.”

The Pentagon trod a delicate line, assuring more “regularly scheduled movements” of aircraft carrier strike groups into the Gulf but stopping short of announcing any special activity.

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.

Forty percent of the world’s traded oil flows through that narrow strait – which Iran threatened last month to shut if sanctions halted its oil exports.

Tehran’s latest threat comes as 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.

After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first to have a serious effect on Iran’s oil trade, which is 60 percent of its economy.

Sanctions signed into law by US President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve would cut off financial institutions that work with Iran’s central bank from the US financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.

The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month. – Reuters