(Bloomberg-San Francisco Chronicle) Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Terry Atlas - Iran is unlikely to shut down oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in response to Western sanctions, Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama's former adviser on Iran, said Tuesday. "Do I really think that they're going to go ahead and try to shut down the Straits of Hormuz?" he asked. "I do not. They will be the ones who suffer the most from that." "I think that they understand the risks that they run and, if you look at their historical behavior, for all their tough talk, they don't go out of their way unnecessarily to provoke" a U.S military response that could threaten the regime. The probability of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz is low, and Saudi Arabia will probably increase crude output to replace supplies from Iran, Jeffrey Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in London Tuesday.
2012-01-11 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive