US warns Iran not to shut key oil route

TEHRAN: The United States warned Iran on Wednesday that any move to block shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the world s most important oil transit channel, will not be tolerated.The warning came after Iran s navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari said in an interview that 'shutting the strait for Iran s armed forces is really easy -- or as we say (in Iran) easier than drinking a glass of water.''But today, we don t need (to shut) the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control, and can control the transit,' he told Iran s Press TV.Washington responded with a strong warning against any attempt to disrupt shipping at the entrance to the Gulf, through which more than a third of the world s tanker-borne oil passes.'Interference with the transit of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated,' Pentagon press secretary George Little said on Wednesday.The strait is a strategic choke point linking the Gulf s petroleum-exporting states of Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to the Indian Ocean.The United States maintains a naval presence in the Gulf in large part to ensure that passage for oil remains free, and the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.Admiral Sayari was speaking a day after Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi threatened to close the strait if the West imposed more sanctions on Iran, and as its navy held war games in international waters to the east of the channel.World prices briefly climbed after Rahimi warned on Tuesday that 'not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz' if the West broadened sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.'The enemies will only drop their plots when we put them back in their place,' the official news agency IRNA quoted Rahimi as saying.Sayari asserted that the Strait of Hormuz 'is completely under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran.' He said Iran s navy was constituted with the aim of being able to close the strait if necessary. 'The Iranians conduct exercises on a fairly routine basis in this area. That s something that we know about,' Little said in Washington.'That being said, any effort to raise the temperature on tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is unhelpful,' he said, adding that there was no sign of Iran taking provocative steps near the channel.'I m unaware of any aggressive hostile action directed toward US vessels in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz,' or against other ships, Little said