Tehran’s security chief vowed to “neutralize the economic war” with the United States and threatened to stop oil spills from the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state-run Press TV reported.
“America is in a corner. Either we keep our promises or we will have to struggle to get out of that corner, and the situation will get worse,” Mohsen Rezaei said in a televised address late Saturday, reported by Press TV.
Iran has allowed a number of Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the latest example of Iran allowing selective access to a vital waterway.
But Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, threatened to cut off all traffic if any of Iran’s neighbors join President Donald Trump’s economic war.
“If they start acting like that, we will not allow a single drop of oil to pass through the Persian Gulf. Oil will not pass through the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf.”
Rezaei said Iran had shipped 70 million barrels of oil “in the past month or two alone,” suggesting that this was despite the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports that was reinstated in mid-July.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy said oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are averaging 8 million to 9 million barrels per day as ships attempt “dark transit” through the waterway.
With help from the U.S. Navy, oil companies charter tankers to turn off their transponders and transport oil from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman, where they offload it to waiting tankers owned by customers and return through the strait.
