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It’s over OIL FUTURES, STUPID ..US Iran get into it over Hormuz

Iran warns of closing strategic Hormuz oil route

Iran’s navy chief warned Wednesday that his country can easily close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the passageway through which a sixth of the world’s oil flows.

It was the second such warning in two days. On Tuesday, Vice President Mohamed Reza Rahimithreatened to close the strait, cutting off oil exports, if the West imposes sanctions on Iran’s oil shipments.

In response, the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet’s spokeswoman warned that any disruption “will not be tolerated.” The spokeswoman, Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, said the U.S. Navy is “always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.”

U.S. Fifth Fleet says won’t allow Hormuz disruption

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said on Wednesday it would not allow any disruption of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran threatened to stop ships moving through the world’s most important oil route.

“Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated,” the Bahrain-based fleet said in an e-mail.

Iran, at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear programme, said on Tuesday it would stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if sanctions were imposed on its crude exports.

“Closing the Strait of Hormuz for Iran’s armed forces is really easy … or as Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water,” Iran’s navy chief Habibollah Sayyari told Iran’s English-language Press TV on Wednesday.

“But right now, we don’t need to shut it …,” said Sayyari, who is leading 10 days of exercises in the Strait.

U.S., Israel Discuss Triggers for Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure

Dec 28, 2011 4:45 AM EST

The Obama administration is trying to assure Israel privately that it would strike Iran militarily if Tehran’s nuclear program crosses certain “red lines”—while attempting to dissuade the Israelis from acting unilaterally. Eli Lake reports exclusively.When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opined earlier this month that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could “consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret,” the Israelis went ballistic behind the scenes. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal diplomatic protest known as a demarche. And the White House was thrust into action, reassuring the Israelis that the administration had its own “red lines” that would trigger military action against Iran, and that there is no need for Jerusalem to act unilaterally.

Panetta’s seemingly innocent remarks on Dec. 2 triggered the latest drama in the tinder-box relationship that the Obama administration is trying to navigate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. With Republicans lining up to court Jewish donors and voters in America in 2012, Obama faces a tricky election-year task of ensuring Iran doesn’t acquire a nuclear bomb on his watch while keeping the Israelis from launching a preemptive strike that could inflame an already teetering Middle East.

The stakes are immensely high, and the distrust that Israelis feel toward the president remains a complicating factor. Those sentiments were laid bare in a speech Netanyahu’s minister of strategic affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, gave on Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, in which he used Panetta’s remarks to cast doubt on the U.S.’s willingness to launch its own military strike.

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