LONDON, August 25. /TASS/. Iran possesses greater capacity to inflict damage on energy sectors of the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf than vice versa, Jorge Leon, Rystad Energy’s senior vice president and head of geopolitical analysis, said in a comment to TASS.
"The biggest oil-market risk may not be the [US] sanctions themselves, but Iran’s response to them. Tehran has threatened to treat countries supporting the US campaign as participants in the war and has again raised the prospect of preventing oil from leaving the Persian Gulf. This creates an important asymmetry for the oil market: there may be relatively little additional Iranian oil left for [US] sanctions to remove, but Iran still has considerable capacity to disrupt everybody else’s exports," he explained.
Meanwhile, Washington’s statements appear tougher than its actual actions now, Leon noted. "The actual announcement came across as much less dramatic than anticipated, with a wide gap between the rhetoric and the substance, at least going by the initial comments. What we have seen so far looks much more like an expansion of the existing sanctions regime than a fundamentally new economic weapon," he said.
