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Iran dismisses EU oil sanctions
Iran has said an oil embargo adopted by European Union foreign ministers over the country's nuclear programme is "unfair" and "doomed to fail".
Catherine Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, said that sanctions would be lifted if Iran provides an appropriate response
The measures would not prevent Iran's "progress for achieving its basic rights", a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The sanctions ban all new oil contracts with Iran and freeze the assets of Iran's central bank in the EU.
The EU said the sanctions prohibit the import, purchase and transport of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products as well as related finance and insurance. All existing contracts will have to be phased out by 1 July.
Investment as well as the export of key equipment and technology for Iran's petrochemical sector is also banned.
The EU currently buys about 20% of Iran's oil exports.
US President Barack Obama has welcomed the EU sanctions, saying they show international unity against the "serious threat" posed by Iran's nuclear programme.
The sanctions were formally adopted at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.
Iran had "failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme", British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a joint statement.
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog has confirmed it is sending a team to Iran between 29 and 31 January "to resolve all outstanding substantive issues".
Last November the IAEA said in a report that it had information suggesting Iran had carried out tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device".
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for energy purposes.
Iran sells most of its oil to countries in Asia. The EU and the United States are now working to persuade Asian countries to reduce their purchases from Iran as well.
Iran has already threatened to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf, through which 20% of the world's oil exports pass.
The US has said it will keep the trade route open, raising the possibility of a confrontation.
Late last year Iran conducted 10 days of military exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, test-firing several missiles.
Oil prices have risen already because of the increasing tension and the expected impact of an EU ban on oil supplies to Europe.
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I wonder who sold all the nuclear furniture to the area, including Israel. Who was instrumental in removing a duly elected leader (Mossadegh way back in the 50`s ) in Iran to put a puppet of the west...and now this very same west is shedding tears of possible major conflagration there and in the world. The bloodstained so called "liberation" of the middle east by the west from the defunct and equally bloody turkish empire after the first world war is a tragedy of untold proportion still going on today 100 years later.
