Iran hints at threat to neighbours’ exports if oil sales halted

President Hassan Rouhani (pictured) appeared yesterday to threaten to disrupt oil shipments from neighbouring countries if Washington presses ahead with its goal of forcing all countries to stop buying Iranian oil.The comments, published on Iran’s presidential website yesterday and partially repeated at a later news conference in Switzerland, could be open to interpretation.However, when asked whether he intended to make a threat, Rouhani declined to provide a clarification.Iranian officials in the past have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route, in retaliation for any hostile US action against Iran.“The Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran’s oil exports. They don’t understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported, while the region’s oil is exported,” the website, president.ir, quoted him as saying. When asked at a news conference in Bern later yesterday whether those comments constituted a threat to interfere with the shipping of neighbouring countries, Rouhani said: “Assuming that Iran could become the only oil producer unable to export its oil is a wrong assumption...The United States will never be able to cut Iran’s oil revenues.”The United States pulled out of a multinational deal in May to lift sanctions against Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear programme.Rouhani said the new US pressure would never succeed.“It is incorrect and unwise to imagine that some day all producer countries will be able to export their surplus oil and Iran will not be able to export its oil,” he said.The Iranian president is in Europe to gather support ahead of a meeting later this week between Iran and the five global powers that are still party to the 2015 nuclear deal.Tehran said its foreign minister would meet counterparts from US allies Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, in Vienna on Friday to discuss ways of maintaining the nuclear deal.