New oil pipeline bypassing Strait of Hormuz opens as Iran continues to threaten blockade

Iran threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz over Western actions is nothing new, and of course the United States has been preparing for a potential battle there for quite a while. Personally, I have always believed that a dispute over the Strait could very well be the cause of a conflict with Iran.

However, now that states on the Persian Gulf have opened a large new pipeline which could significantly lower the current proportion of the world’s oil supply currently passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the power of this threat is reduced considerably.

When considering the threats being made by the government of Iran, I think it is quite important to note that they make grandiose threats on a regular basis and that one should really not take these types of claims all too seriously.

While somewhere around 20% of the world’s oil currently passes through this relatively small strait, the minimum of 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day which can pass through the pipeline will likely lower this number considerably.

The announcement was made by officials from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), since the pipeline begins in the western area of the Gulf nation.

This comes almost immediately after an Iranian naval chief claimed on Saturday that they could prevent even “a single drop of oil” from passing through the Strait of Hormuz if Iranian security is threatened.

Mohammed Saif al-Afkham, the director general of Fujairah municipality at the Indian Ocean end of the pipeline, announced that officials inaugurated the project on Sunday, while the UAE’s state-run International Petroleum Investment Company confirmed that the first shipment that passed through the pipeline was loaded onto a tanker according to the Associated Press and DPA.

It is hardly a secret that threats coming out of Tehran are not to be taken as realistic, as even the Associated Press notes, “the Iranian foreign ministry has so far played down the warnings and said that Tehran would not endanger global oil exports.”

It appears to me that individuals in the Iranian parliament and politics in general attempt to make themselves look like brave, courageous leaders by making clearly unrealistic threats and hard-line statements.

Yet when it comes to actually making the moves, I think the foreign ministry likely knows that they will never come to pass.

Consider that earlier this month, Iranian members of parliament were reportedly going to draft and pass a bill which calls “for a plan to block Hormuz Strait in reaction to oil sanctions.”

Unsurprisingly, the bill has not even been presented to legislators yet.

According to the UAE embassy in Washington, D.C., the pipeline actually began being filled with oil on June 30, adding in a statement that the project highlights the UAE’s “commitment to ensuring the reliable and safe delivery of crude oil … to global markets.”

The U.S. ambassador to the UAE, Ambassador Michael H. Corbin, attended the inauguration of the pipeline, calling it “a historic step in establishing multiple routes for the vital flow of oil from the Arabian Peninsula.”

The latest threat, from Iranian naval commander Ali Fadavi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also includes the claim that Iran will increase their military presence in international waters.

“If they (the U.S.) do not obey international laws and the IRGC’s warnings, it will have very bad consequences for them,” said Fadavi, according to the Iranian Fars News Agency.

“The IRGC’s naval forces have had the ability since the (Iran-Iraq) war to completely control the Strait of Hormuz and not allow even a single drop of oil to pass through,” claimed Fadavi.

“IRGC special naval forces are present on all of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ships in the Indian Ocean and to its east and west, to prevent any movement,” he added.

It is hard to tell if these claims are at all accurate or even true. Unfortunately, now that there would be a way to continue to get oil to pass through the region even if the Iranians were to close the Strait of Hormuz, it seems as though the Western nations which have pressed Iran for so long have one less obstacle in their path.