Iran drafts bill to block Hormuz for Gulf oil tankers
02/07/2012
http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=1&id=30188

DUBAI, (Reuters) - Iran's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has
drafted a bill calling for Iran to try to stop oil tankers from shipping
crude through the Strait of Hormuz to countries that support sanctions
against it, a committee member said on Monday.
"There is a bill prepared in the National Security and Foreign Policy
committee of Parliament that stresses the blocking of oil tanker traffic
carrying oil to countries that have sanctioned Iran," Iranian MP Ibrahim
Agha-Mohammadi was quoted by Iran's parliamentary news agency as saying.

"This bill has been developed as an answer to the European Union's oil
sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Agha-Mohammadi said that 100 of Tehran's 290 members of parliament had
signed the bill as of Sunday.

Iranian threats to block the waterway through which about 17 million barrels
a day sailed in 2011 have grown in the past year as U.S. and European
sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of funds for its nuclear program have
tightened.

A heavy western naval presence in the Gulf and surrounding area is a big
impediment to any attempt to block the vital shipping route through which
sails most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq and nearly all the gas exported from Qatar.

A European Union ban on imports of Iranian oil started on Sunday.