Iran says Saudi Arabia should move to curb oil price fall

Reuters ^ | Thu Jan 1, 2015 11:22am EST | Michelle Moghtader

[Olog-hai]

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters.

Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond.

Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5½ year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut and calls from some of the cartel’s members—including Iran and Venezuela—to cut production. …

[Jonty30]

Nah, even though it hurts our producers, it hurts Iran’s producers even more.

[Olog-hai]

Iran’s threatened to close off the Strait of Hormuz more than once in recent years. If they actually do it, who’s got the backbone to open it back up? Current leadership in DC? If Pax Americana fails, there won’t be Pax Anyone-elseica, and Obama sure isn’t a friend of Pax Americana.

[lee martell]

And Saudi Arabia says Iran can take go fly a kite, so long as to do so is Halal.

[Jonty30]

They’ve only threatened to do that if they were invaded. It would be beyond foolish for them to do that otherwise, because it soul cut themselves off from exporting their oil permanently.

[MinorityRepublican]

The Saudis hate the Persians because they’re “heretics”.

[existentially_kuffer]

Nah, Sunni’s hate Shia more than hating Persians!

[thackney]

For reference:

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presently have pipelines able to ship crude oil outside of the Persian Gulf and have additional pipeline capacity to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. At the end of 2013, the total available unused pipeline capacity from the two countries combined was approximately 4.3 million bbl/d.

[SunkenCiv]

Iran should get its missles and terrorists out of Eritrea and Venezuela.

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[Olog-hai]

How? Who would break their blockade and subsequently blockade them? Does Obama have the will?

Russia, China and the EU won’t stop trading with Iran no matter what they do. We have no allies in them; they are Iran’s allies, both economically and against Israel and the US particularly.

BTW, Iran threatened to close the strait in question in response to economic sanctions—or anything they deem a threat.

On whether only military or other types of pressure could spur Iran to make such a move, (Ambassador Hassan Danaie-Far) said: “It can include all of them.” …

[MinorityRepublican]

Last time I was aware, there arent any Sunni Persians.