Iran’s weakness: its ports 15, July 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Iran, The Emirates.Tags: Iran, Iran port, Iranian ports, Iranian shipping, UAE reexporting
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There’s a very interesting article written by Meir Javedanfar in The Diplomat discussing a strategic weakness of Iran. Javedanfar notes that Iran’s southern ports are not able to accommodate +100,000 ton ships. [Presumably they don’t have any such ports in the north…] Any larger ships must dock in the UAE are the goods reexported. This is problematic, Javendanfar, suggests for a few reasons.
- Given the increase in 250,000 ton ships plying the Gulf, Iran is increasingly losing out on economies of scale.
- Relying on another country for transit of such an amount of goods is a dangerous tactic. Particularly given the UAE’s increasing proclivities towards siding with American sanctions, this could well bode ill for Iran.
- Iran is paying hundreds of millions of dollars (perhaps billions, he suggests) to the UAE in port fees.
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