TEHERAN, Iran - February 17, 2011 - Iran is arranging with Egyptian officials to have two of its warships use the Suez Canal, Iranian state-run Press TV said. The Suez Canal Authority said after today’s report that no Iranian naval vessels had been granted permission to sail through the waterway.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said yesterday that Iran was planning later that day to send two gunboats through the canal to Syria, which would involve heading through the eastern Mediterranean, off Israel’s coast. He called the move a “provocation.”
“It’s meant as a clear provocation to Israel, and is also an attempt by Iran to change the subject from the fact that, while Teheran welcomed the downfall of the Egyptian government, they have a problem at home right now where a certain section of their own people would like to see that regime also fall,” Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya near Tel Aviv, said in a phone interview.
Concern that anti-government unrest in Egypt would disrupt canal traffic sent oil prices to a two-year high on February 2. According to Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., the 120-mile Suez Canal carries about 2.5% of world oil output (though conflicting reports place the the number as high as 30%), and is a key route for ships carrying Asian consumer goods to Europe.
