The European Union embargo on Iranian oil will only come into effect in six months, but the leadership in Tehran wants to act first: Exports to Europe are set to be halted immediately. It is a move which could mean added difficulties for struggling economies in southern Europe.
It’s a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.
The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened.
“If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions,” said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s energy commission, reportedly said. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.
The EU sanctions allow for oil deliveries from Iran until July 1. Any pre-empting of this timescale by Tehran could prove problematic for countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, who would need to urgently find new suppliers.
China, meanwhile, a major importer of Iranian oil, has also criticized the EU sanctions. The Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday as saying: “To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches.”
tit for tat? lmao
afp
Posted: 29 January 2012 0941 hrs
TEHRAN: An International Atomic Energy Agency team arrived in Iran early Sunday on a mission to clear up what it called “outstanding substantive issues” on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the official IRNA news agency said.
The UN atomic watchdog’s chief inspector, the Belgian Herman Nackaerts, is leading the IAEA delegation that is scheduled to hold talks with Iranian officials from later Sunday to Tuesday, the report added.
The delegation also included IAEA number two Rafael Grossi, IRNA said, adding the team “will probably visit the Fordo” enrichment site south of the capital Tehran.
Earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran had begun enriching uranium to 20-percent purity deep inside a mountain bunker at Fordo, taking it significantly closer to the 90-percent mark needed for a nuclear bomb.
IRNA provided no further detail, but diplomats in Vienna said the IAEA’s senior legal official Peri Lynne Johnson, a US citizen, was to be in the delegation.
The visit comes after a damning report by the atomic watchdog agency in November raised suspicions that the Islamic republic had done work on developing nuclear weapons.
The report led to a substantial increase in pressure on Iran from the United States, the European Union and others.
With Iran vehemently denying that it wants nuclear weapons and dismissing the IAEA report as baseless, the watchdog’s chief Yukiya Amano on Friday urged the Tehran to show “substantial cooperation” during the visit.
The Islamic republic, is already under four rounds of United Nations sanctions for refusing to stop enriching uranium until the IAEA is satisfied its programme is peacefu