As President Donald Trump continues threatening to commit war crimes in Iran by bombing power plants, Iran is signaling that it could put a further squeeze on global oil prices by shutting down yet another strait used for transporting petroleum outside the Middle East.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, threatened in a Sunday social media post to close down the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a waterway adjacent to the coast of Yemen that is under control of Iran-backed Houthi militants.
“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes,” Velayati cautioned, “it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move.”
As Al Jazeera noted in a Monday report, the Houthis already shut down the strait during Israel’s war on Gaza, and doing so again at the same time Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz could send global energy prices to unprecedented highs.
“The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia,” Al Jazeera reported. “If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25% … of the world’s oil and gas supply.”
Oil prices have shot up since Trump launched his illegal war with Iran more than a month ago, and on Monday the price of Brent crude oil futures was trading at $110 per barrel, while the average price for gas in the US rose to $4.12 per gallon, according to data from AAA.
Democratic members of the US Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) last week released a study estimating that, thanks to Trump’s war, Americans are paying 35% more to fill up their cars than they were paying a month earlier.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the JEC, pointed to the report in a Monday social media post and said Americans were getting hit with major price shocks because “President Trump decided to wage an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy.”
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the JEC, told WMUR that Trump’s Iran war took an already bad situation for American families and made it worse.
“Families are already being pushed to the brink,” Hassan said. “That was true before the war started, by the cost of everything from groceries to rent to healthcare insurance premiums and prescriptions and even more. But now they’re being forced to pay more at the pump.”
Originally published by Common Dreams, this article is republished under a Creative Commons license.
