Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Iran has anti-ship missiles on Abu Musa

But even limited strikes carry enormous risks. A U.S. cruise missile attack could be countered by sophisticated anti-ship missiles that Iran has installed on the Island of Abu Musa in the Strait of Hormuz. In the event of an attack, the Strait of Hormuz could be shut down, potentially blocking Persian Gulf-bound oil tankers and causing oil prices to skyrocket past $100 per barrel.

“It is almost certain that an attack by Israel or the United States [on Iran’s nuclear facilities] would result in immediate retaliation,” according to an analysis by the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

A likely retaliatory response, the Monterey Institute said, includes an immediate Iranian counterattack on Israel and U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf, as well as intensified efforts to destabilize Iraq and promote all-out confrontation between the United States and Iraq’s Shiite majority.

The scenarios provided by the U.S. government are not much more optimistic. As Newsweek reported in September 2004, “the CIA and [Defense Intelligence Agency] have war-gamed the likely consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. No one liked the outcome. As an Air Force source tells it, ‘The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating.’”
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/052205.html



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Report Cites Risk of Iranian Attack on Saudi Oilfields
Attack Could Rock US Economy
Terror - Islam
Friday, May 13, 2005
OL Staff
A new study has warned that oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia could be destroyed by Iranian medium- and intermediate-range missiles.

The study, conducted by energy researchers at Rice University's Washington-based Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, also warned that Iran could block Saudi oil exports through the Persian Gulf.

An attack on the most vulnerable facility — the Saudi oil processing site at Abqaiq — and the closing of the Straits of Hormuz would have a profound implications on the U.S. economy.

The study urged the kingdom to upgrade the trans-Saudi Petroline, which would allow 11 million barrels of oil a day to be sent to ports on the Red Sea. The project was estimated to cost $600 million, Middle East Newsline reported.

"Assuming the worse — a complete closure of the Straits of Hormuz — this bypass system is estimated to be capable of reducing the economic impact to the U.S. to a loss of only one percent of gross domestic product," the report said.

"This figure could be reduced even further if additional pipelines were built from Abu Dhabi to ports in Oman."

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=5358


While the island dispute between Japan and South Korea has been getting the most media attention recently, three contested islands in the Persian Gulf are continuing to poison Arab-Iranian relations, so much so that Iran, currently at loggerheads with the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, has nonetheless rejected a United Arab Emirates request for U.N. mediation, asserting that Iranian sovereignty is not negotiable. The ownership of Greater and Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa islands has been in dispute since 1971, when former ruler Britain withdrew from "east of Suez." The largest of the three, Greater Tunb ("Tunb al Kubra" in Arabic, "Jazireh-ye Tonb-e Bozorg" in Farsi) lies close to the Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. If location is everything, however, the miniscule islets have it, as they sit astride the eastbound and westbound tanker shipping lanes at Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world's oil supplies pass. Iran's representative to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the islets are an "integral part" of Iran, and accordingly there isn't anything to negotiate. There has recently been a notable increase in pressure from Arab countries to begin negotiations on the question of sovereignty, which Tehran ascribes to "part of a campaign orchestrated by Washington to isolate Iran on the international stage."

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050516-012138-3107r.htm