Envoy Stresses Failure of Oil Embargos against Iran

A CONTRIBUTOR | JANUARY 2012 | SOURCE: Fars News Agency

A senior Iranian diplomat said oil embargos against Iran are ineffective and Tehran will certainly keep its traditional customers. "We will have our traditional customers for selling oil," Tehran's Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said in a news conference held at the Russian Rianovosti news agency.

Envoy Stresses Failure of Oil Embargos against Iran

He added that some countries such as China will not abandon purchasing Iran's oil despite the US pressures.

Meantime, Sajjadi called on the world states to avoid following US policies towards Iran, warning that they will have to pay the price for their obedience since Americans cannot help them.

China made it clear that, whatever the commercial or political calculations driving ups and downs in its crude orders from Iran, it rejects in principle unilateral US sanctions.

"Iran is an extremely big oil supplier to China, and we hope that China's oil imports won't be affected, because this is needed for our development," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun told a news conference in answer to a question about whether Beijing could curtail crude from Iran under US pressure.

"We oppose applying pressure and sanctions, because these approaches won't solve the problems. They never have," Zhai told the briefing about Wen's six-day visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Manouchehr Takin, an analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) research group, said a removal of Iranian oil exports would hurt Europe more than Tehran.

"The Europeans are importing nearly half a million barrels per day ... Refineries in Greece, Italy and Spain are the main customers. They would suffer very much immediately financial loss (in event of sanctions) because they cannot easily replace that Iranian crude with other crude," he told AFP in December.

"Financially, I think these refineries in Europe - specially those three countries that are having financial problems - would lose and suffer more than Iran would lose in finding other customers," Takin added.