By HASHEM KALANTARI AND ROBIN POMEROY | REUTERS on ARABNEWS
TEHRAN: A law to be debated in Iran’s parliament on Sunday may halt oil exports to the European Union as early as next week, foiling an EU plan to phase in an oil embargo gradually to help its struggling economies adapt, lawmakers said on Friday.
“On Sunday, parliament will have to approve a ‘double emergency’ bill calling for a halt in the export of Iranian oil to Europe starting next week,” Hossein Ibrahimi, vice-chairman of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
Parliament is pushing for the export ban to deny the EU a six-month phase-in of the embargo on Iran’s oil, which the bloc agreed on Monday as part of a raft of tough new Western sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to curb its nuclear program.
The EU accounted for 18 percent of Iranian crude oil sales in the first half of 2011, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), making it Iran’s second-biggest customer after China.
“If the deputies arrive at the conclusion that the Iranian oil exports to Europe must be halted, parliament will not delay a moment (in passing the bill),” Fars quoted Moayed Hosseini-Sadr, a member of parliament’s energy committee, as saying.
“If Iran’s oil export to Europe … is halted, the Europeans will surely be taken by surprise and will understand the power of Iran and will realize that the Islamic establishment will not succumb to the Europeans’ policies,” he said.
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