World News
U.S. Says Iran Will Not Close Strait of Hormuz
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the U.S. will hold Iran "directly responsible for any disruption of shipping" in the Strait of Hormuz.
"We've invested in capabilities to ensure that the Iranian attempt to close down shipping in the Gulf is something that we are going to be able to defeat, if they make a decision to do that," Panetta told a Pentagon news conference.
"The United States is fully prepared for all contingencies here," he added.
The announcement follows Iran's threat to close the Strait following Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic which came into effect on June 28, 2012 and July 1, 2012.
"If they decide to sanction us completely, we will not allow even one drop of oil to be transited through the Strait of Hormuz," Iran's Chairman of the parliament's Energy Commission Arsalan Fathipour was quoted as saying by the country's FARS News Agency (FNA).
The U.S. responded with a July 16, 2012 announcement that it would deploy the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and its strike group in the region four months early, with Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Brigadier General Hossein Salami responding by telling FNA the aircraft carriers were "nothing more than rusty iron in their eyes."
Additionally, on July 6, 2012 U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said the forward staging base ship USS Ponce had arrived in arrived in Bahrain to support mine countermeasures (MCM) operations and other missions in the area.
Over 30 years ago The New York Times' military correspondent Drew Middleton said "the Strait of Hormuz is the greatest economic choke point in the world," a fact that seems to have held true as today a reported one-fifth of all the crude oil traded worldwide passes through the 19 mile wide waters.
The West says the sanctions are taking a toll on Iran with a June 28, 2012 statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Iran's crude oil exports have dropped to 1.5 million barrels per day, down from approximately 2.5 million barrels per day in 2011.
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