Iran announced Tuesday that it has put its elite Revolutionary Guards in charge of defending the vital Gulf oil route. The announcement came as France joined the United States in calling for new United Nations sanctions to force Tehran to comply with international demands over its contested nuclear program. Iran has warned repeatedly that it will close the narrow Hormuz Strait at the mouth of the Gulf if the US or Israel attacks it amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program. Around 40 percent of the world's oil passes through Hormuz. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, the top military adviser of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced on the state news agency IRNA that responsibility to defend the Gulf has been delegated to the Guards' navy, while the regular navy would operate in the Oman Sea, outside the Gulf and in the landlocked Caspian Sea. Safavi, who was the head of the Guards until earlier this year, added a warning that all vessels in the Gulf are within the range of Iranian missiles. Iran's hardened stance follows a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's atomic watchdog, that said Iran had not frozen uranium enrichment activities as instructed by the UN. French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier described the report as “extremely worrying” and said: “We have no choice but to work, in the coming days and weeks, on a new sanctions resolution at the Security Council.” France belongs to a group of six world powers attempting to convince Iran to halt sensitive nuclear work with an incentives package in exchange for full suspension of uranium enrichment. The US told Tehran Monday that it faced possible new UN sanctions over its nuclear program. But China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, argued on Tuesday that fresh sanctions would not resolve the stalemate. Last winter, Iranian and US ships patrolling the Gulf had a series of small confrontations in Hormuz that the Americans blamed on provocations by Guards ships. “Our armed forces, possessed with defensive weapons including missiles, air, sea and torpedoes, are able to control the strait of Hormuz,” Gen. Safavi said. He also said that if Israel attacks, US forces in the region “will be put in serious danger.” “Definitely, the Americans don't want to get involved in a fourth front after conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia,” the general added. The US says it seeking a diplomatic solution, but has not ruled out military action. Iran denies it intends to develop nuclear weapons.
