Iran Guards vow to replace Western oil firms
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards boasted on Saturday that they
can fill the gap in the country’s energy sector left by Western oil
firms pulling out in the face of new sanctions against Tehran.
A top commander highlighted the unit’s growing influence in the
economy even as Guards ground, air and naval forces flexed their muscles
in a drill in the key Strait of Hormuz oil route that began on Thursday.
South Pars oil refinery |
Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, who heads the Guards’ political
bureau, also played down the impact of Western sanctions on its trading
arms and personnel.
“Today, the Revolutionary Guards are proud to declare that they have
the ability and know-how to easily replace large foreign companies,”
Javani told the ILNA news agency.
“For example, we can take up big projects in (the southern port and
energy hub of) Assalouyeh and replace Total and Shell,” he said,
referring to oil majors that had previously been involved in Iran.
The Guards’ presence in the economy has risen under the presidency of
hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as the United States and European
Union target the body for “weapons proliferation” amid accusations it is
involved in Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.
The Guards were formed by Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini soon after the 1979 revolution to defend the Islamic
republic from internal and external threats.
They are one of Iran’s most powerful institutions and fall under the
direct command of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini as the
nation’s supreme leader.
In recent months Washington has been pushing for a fourth round of UN
sanctions against Tehran that, among other measures, European diplomats
say would specifically target the Guards’ business interests.
It is the growing economic power of the Guards that Washington has
been targeting for several years with its own unilateral sanctions. The
Guards now permeate all of Iranian society, with their engineering arm
picking up massive contracts.
Iranian media have reported that the Guards’ main industrial arm,
Khatam-ol Anbiya Construction, which has some 25,000 engineers and
staff, has been bidding for energy projects as multinational firms come
under pressure to reduce their involvement in the face of UN and US
sanctions.
In 2006, the Guards won a contract worth more than two billion
dollars to develop phases 15 and 16 of Iran’s biggest gas field, South
Pars, and another contract of around one billion dollars to build a
pipeline towards Pakistan.
They are also part of a consortium contracted to build a high-speed
rail link between Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, shipping ports
on the south coast and a major dam in Khuzestan province.
AP |