Robert Ford, the American ambassador, and 17 other U.S. officials left Syria and were expected to travel back to the United States. Ford informed Syrian authorities of the decision to leave earlier in the day, State Department officials said. Two diplomats left by air and the others went overland to Jordan.

Their departure comes two weeks after the State Department warned that it would close the embassy unless Assad’s government better protected the mission, citing safety concerns about embassy personnel and a recent series of car bombs. And it coincides with a U.S. effort to build an international coalition in support of Syria’s opposition.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement that Ford remains the U.S. ambassador “to Syria and its people,” and said he would continue his work on Syria, maintaining contacts with the Syrian opposition and supporting “the peaceful political transition which the Syrian people have so bravely sought.”

The Polish embassy will provide emergency consular services for Americans remaining in Syria, the State Department said.

The U.N. estimates that well over 5,400 people have been killed since March, when mostly peaceful protesters rose up to voice their anger toward four decades of dictatorship by the Assad family. A brutal crackdown ensued, prompting armed rebels to take the fight to regime troops and try to establish control in pro-opposition areas. The government has responded with even more violence, raising fears of an all-out civil war.

Despite the increased bloodshed, world powers are bitterly divided over how to deal with the situation. The U.S., its European partners and much of the Arab world want Assad to step down and transfer power to his vice president as part of a transition to democracy. But Russia and China, wary after watching the West help Libyan militia oust Moammar Gadhafi, reject any talk of military intervention or regime change. They vetoed a U.N. resolution over the weekend that would have endorsed an Arab League plan for Syria’s post-Assad future.

President Barack Obama said the ongoing conflict in Syria should be resolved without outside military intervention, saying a negotiated solution in Syria is still possible. And he defended his administration’s actions during the 11-month uprising against Assad’s regime.

“We have been relentless in sending a message that it is time for Assad to go,” Obama said during an interview with NBC. “This is not going to be a matter of if, it’s going to be a matter of when.”

Obama deflected questions about whether the U.S and its partners should intervene militarily in Syria as they did in Libya, saying those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“Not every situation is going to allow for the kind of military solution we saw with Libya,” he said. “I think it is very possible for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention.”

With diplomacy at an impasse, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Sunday for “friends of democratic Syria” to unite and rally against Assad’s regime, previewing the possible formation of a group of like-minded nations to coordinate assistance to the Syrian opposition. Speaking in Bulgaria, she said the world had a duty to halt the violence and see Assad out of power. She called the U.N. setback a “travesty.”

The contact group is likely to be similar, but not identical, to the one established last year for Libya, which oversaw the international help for Gadhafi’s opponents. It also coordinated NATO military operations to protect Libyan civilians, something that is not envisioned in Syria.

The Syrian group is likely to concentrate on enhancing sanctions against the Assad regime and trying to bring disparate Syrian opposition groups inside and outside the country together so that they can form a more formidable opposition. It could also seek more humanitarian relief for embattled Syrian communities and greater monitoring arms sales to Assad’s government.

Earlier Monday, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said China and Russia were running the risk of suffering the same sort of international isolation as Assad because of their decision to block a U.N. Security Council vote embracing an Arab League solution for the Syrian crisis.

Rice said she thinks both Moscow and Beijing “will come to regret” their votes Saturday against the Arab League-sponsored resolution aimed at moving Assad in the direction of a peaceful transition to democracy in his violence-wracked country.

The Obama administration has long called on Assad to leave power, and officials insist his regime’s demise is inevitable.

But just over a year ago, the administration had sought to engage Damascus and sent Ford to the country in the hopes of prying away Iran’s main ally in the Arab world and gaining a more willing partner in American efforts to forge stability in Lebanon and peace among Israel and its Arab neighbors. Syria had gone years without an American ambassador after the Bush administration broke ties over Syria’s alleged role in the 2005 assassination of politician Rafik Hariri in neighboring Lebanon, and it remains on a U.S. “state sponsor of terrorism” list.

Assad largely shrugged off U.S. attempts to pull his nation away from its alliances with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. And as protests escalated in Syria, Ford took on an increasingly high-profile role defending the rights of Syrian protesters. Threats led the U.S. to pull him out of the country in October, but he returned in December to what officials described as an important job monitoring abuses and developments on the ground — even if U.S. engagement efforts were dead. Clarion Ledger

The Anglo-American aggression addicts haven’t kicked the habit. The team that brought you shock and awe and Operation Infinite Justice is gearing up for yet another crack at winning a senseless war in the Middle East.

This time the target is Iran, the pretence the regime’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons. But some things will remain the same – it will lead to slaughter and end in disaster.

A brief recap of the Anglo-American “war on terror” in the Middle East, 2001 to date: Afghanistan was occupied to “eliminate terrorism” but, many thousands of dead later, terror has spread to Pakistan and beyond, leaving Kabul with the most corrupt government on earth.

Iraq was invaded to disarm Saddam of weapons he didn’t have. US troops have finally withdrawn, leaving millions dead or displaced and the country broken in dysfunctional sectarian misery.

Libya, far from being the war that went well, was bombed to “protect civilians” with the result that 30,000 died and thousands more remain in prison reportedly being tortured by the regime Nato installed.

“They couldn’t be so crazy” is therefore not an unreasonable response to the speculation about yet another Middle East war. But here we go again.

The US national intelligence director James Clapper’s unsubstantiated claim that Iran is preparing attacks in the US itself – without even a 45-minute warning, apparently – is one sign among many that the familiar spook-media propaganda coalition is in overdrive again, selling another cock-eyed conflict.

An attack against Iran will not stop the regime acquiring nuclear weapons if it wishes to do so. It can only make it more likely that it will decide to acquire them, and will eventually surely succeed.

Along the way thousands more will die, conflict will extend across the region, oil supplies will be disrupted and the Iranian regime will be strengthened domestically.

Iran is not a liberal democracy. That is an issue which, as the Arab spring shows, is more likely to be addressed by the Iranian people themselves than by a foreign attack sponsored by Saudi Arabia, most recently the butchers of Bahraini democracy.

The central case for attacking Iran is animated by the determination that Washington and its allies have the right to dominate the Middle East come what may.

That is the argument offered by Matthew Kroenig, until six months ago the Pentagon’s special adviser on Iran, in an article in Foreign Affairs baldly titled Time to Attack Iran: “A nuclear-armed Iran would immediately limit US freedom of action in the Middle East … Iran could threaten any US political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region.”

The pragmatic case against war is overwhelming. But the principled case is even stronger. Britain and the US have launched a series of wars across the Middle East for no better purpose than maintaining their control over a region whose peoples they dare not allow to be self-governing and independent.

Can an attack be stopped? If Britain can be detached that would help derail the war drive. Five British warships sail alongside the US navy in the Gulf, and we can be sure that Diego Garcia will be a base for the bombing onslaught – it was ethnically cleansed by the Wilson government for precisely this sort of purpose.

William Hague has made plain government support for US policy so far. The delight of the Commons exchanges on the issue was Jack Straw, whose only contribution to diplomacy was marketing the novel concept of the “unreasonable UN veto” at the time of the Iraq aggression, insisting that Britain should not act without clear UN authority now.

Millions of British people peacefully and democratically opposed the Iraq war and were ignored by Tony Blair. He got his war but lost his political momentum, reputation and job, in that order, as a result.

Today’s anti-war campaign must learn from the Occupy movement and UK Uncut, as well as breaking that bipartisan parliamentary consensus for war which proved so calamitous in 2003, if the cycle of war is to end. A nationwide day of action on Saturday 11 February against attacking Iran is the start. By  Andrew Murray, The Guardian

A month before the Russian Prime Minister stands for re-election as president to the Kremlin, the first major rally since the New Year showed that the anti-government protests which began after parliamentary elections in early December are not just going to go away.

After the march yesterday, a number of opposition leaders addressed the crowds from the stage. One ripped up a portrait of Mr Putin to loud cheers, while others demanded new, free elections. “Russia without Putin,” the crowd chanted repeatedly. The organisers claimed 120,000 people had attended.

Across Moscow, another rally was held in support of Mr Putin. Police said more than 50,000 people turned up, but eyewitnesses put it much lower. There were widespread reports that civil servants and those working for state-affiliated companies had been told to attend, and that flags and placards were distributed among them.

The atmosphere at the anti-Putin rally was more spontaneous, and many of the protesters had designed their own banners and slogans. One of the more creative was an eight-metre condom, with “protection from Putin” written on it. Mr Putin, in a December televised phone-in, claimed he had mistaken the white ribbons that the protesters wear for used condoms. He also said that the protests were organised from abroad, and that people were paid to attend.

Mr Putin’s current approval ratings have slipped to between 40 and 50 per cent. He does not face any serious challengers in the 4 March ballot, but will need to get at least 50 per cent of the vote to avoid a second-round runoff. The Independent

“Threatening Iran and attacking Iran will harm America … Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to continue our nuclear course … In response to threats of oil embargo and war, we have our own threats to impose at the right time,” Khamenei told worshippers in a speech broadcast live on state television.

“I have no fear of saying that we will back and help any nation or group that wants to confront and fight against the Zionist regime (Israel).” Daily Press

Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time the U.S. had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Promising the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give President Barack Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this fall.

Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of U.S. troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.

The U.S. has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 U.S. troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.

Panetta said U.S. troops would move into an “advise-and-assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success.

The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. U.S. troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.

At the same time, Panetta said the NATO discussions would also focus on a potential downsizing of Afghan security forces from 350,000 troops, largely because of the expense of maintaining such a large army. The U.S. and other NATO countries support those forces at a cost of about $6 billion a year, but financial crises in Europe are causing countries to balk at the bill.

He and his team played down last week’s announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that his country would break with its NATO allies and accelerate the withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan by pulling back its troops a year early, by the end of 2013. Pentagon officials said Sarkozy and the U.S. might be more in tune than it appeared, although they acknowledged confusion about the French president’s statement and said their goal was to sort it out at the NATO meeting today.

“A lot of policy officials in Paris were scrambling” after Sarkozy’s announcement, said a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity. “So getting exactly to what the French bottom line is hasn’t been easy for them, much less for us.”

Sarkozy made the announcement after an attack by a rogue Afghan soldier who killed four unarmed French soldiers on a training mission. There have been similar incidents of Afghan troops’ killing of U.S. forces, including the death of a Marine in Helmand province early Wednesday.

The senior defense official said the Americans considered the attacks as “isolated incidents,” although “obviously very disturbing.” He said vetting procedures for Afghan security forces were being reviewed.

Panetta said he would also seek to reassure NATO that although budget constraints and a focus on Asia were forcing the U.S. to withdraw two combat brigades — as many as 10,000 troops — from Europe, it was not abandoning its allies. The U.S., he said, would try to make up some of the difference by rotating more troops in for training exercises in Europe. By Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times

“The sanctions have been biting much, much more literally in recent weeks than they have until this time,” CIA Director David Petraeus said at a Senate intelligence committee hearing.

“What we have to see now is how does that play out, what is the level of popular discontent inside Iran, does that influence the strategic decision-making of the Supreme Leader and the regime, keeping in mind that the regime’s paramount goal in all that they do is their regime survival,” he said.

Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost “considerable value” and there have been “runs on the bank” as Iranians try to dump domestic currency and acquire assets that will hold value better as inflation “takes off,” Petraeus said.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that sanctions so far had not caused Iran’s leaders to change their pursuit of nuclear capabilities.

But he said some Iranian officials appear more willing to conduct an attack in the United States if they feel threatened, citing last year’s alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

“The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper said in his Senate testimony.

“We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas,” he said.

Senators at the hearing asked about Israel’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, amid speculation that Israel might launch a pre-emptive strike at the country’s known nuclear sites.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s chairwoman, and Petraeus said they met recently with the director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

“We’re doing a lot with the Israelis, working together with them. And of course for them, this is, as they have characterized, is an existential threat,” Clapper said.

Petraeus, appearing with other intelligence community leaders at an annual open hearing on global threats to U.S. security, said that China has reduced imports of Iranian oil but “it remains to be seen whether that continues.”

“It appears that Saudi Arabian production is ramping up and can fill some of the demand that might have been met by Iranian exports now that there are the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran,” he said.

The United States imposed the harshest sanctions so far on Iran when President Barack Obama on December 31 signed into law new sanctions on transactions involving Iran’s central bank.

The European Union last week imposed a ban on the import, purchase or transport of Iranian oil. Existing contracts can be honored up to July 1.

The West has imposed sanctions over the years due to concerns that Iran’s nuclear development program is aimed at building a weapon. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

The latest U.S. sanctions will have a deeper impact because the Central Bank of Iran handles a large volume of foreign bank transactions and receives the revenue for the roughly 70 percent of oil sold by the National Iranian Oil Company, Clapper said.

‘CRITICAL YEAR’

“According to most timelines I’ve heard, 2012 will be a critical year for convincing or preventing Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon,” Feinstein, a Democrat, said.

Iran is keeping open the option to develop a nuclear bomb but U.S. intelligence agencies do not know whether its leaders ultimately will decide to build one, Clapper said in his written statement to the panel.

New U.S. sanctions were likely to have a greater impact than previous ones, but were not expected to lead to the downfall of Iran’s leadership, Clapper said.

“We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so,” he said in written testimony. “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Iran’s advances, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthen the assessment that “Iran is well capable of producing enough highly-enriched uranium for a weapon if its political leaders, specifically the Supreme Leader himself, choose to do so,” Clapper said.

“Iran’s economic difficulties probably will not jeopardize the regime, absent a sudden and sustained fall in oil prices or a sudden domestic crisis that disrupts oil exports,” Clapper’s written testimony said.

Iran has sought to “exploit the Arab Spring but has reaped limited benefits, thus far,” the testimony said. Tehran’s biggest regional concern is ally Syria, where a change in leadership would be a major strategic loss for Iran.

Nearly a year into the unrest, conflict in Syria is unlikely to be resolved quickly, and it is a matter of time before Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad falls, Clapper said.

“I personally believe it’s a question of time before Assad falls, but that’s the issue, it could be a long time,” Clapper said. “Protraction of these demonstrations, the opposition continues to be fragmented, but I do not see how he can sustain his rule of Syria.”

CHINA CONCERNED

Arab Spring uprisings fueled concern among Chinese leaders that similar unrest could undermine their rule, prompting Beijing to launch its harshest crackdown on dissent in at least a decade, Clapper said in his written testimony.

At the same time, worries about the global economy helped heighten Beijing’s resistance to external pressure and suspicion of U.S. intentions, it said.

China continued a policy of permitting modest appreciation of the renminbi, “although it remains substantially undervalued,” the testimony said.

Espionage by China, Russia, and Iran will pose significant security threats to the United States in coming years, the written statement said.

Russia and China are aggressive and successful in economic espionage against the United States, and “Iran’s intelligence operations against the United States, including cyber capabilities, have dramatically increased in recent years in depth and complexity,” the statement said.

Foreign intelligence services have targeted the unclassified and classified computer networks of U.S. government agencies, businesses and universities. “We assess that many intrusions into U.S. networks are not being detected,” the statement said. By Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell, Yahoo Daily News

Activists and the Arab League urged the UN to take stronger action after a surge in violence this week in which dozens of people have died.

The UK, France and Germany drafted a resolution with Arab states, supporting the League’s call for President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to a deputy.

Russia, an ally of Mr Assad, has said it will not back the text.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told reporters after the meeting in New York that the draft resolution was unacceptable, but Moscow was ready to engage in further talks.

He said Russia had set out its “red lines” and that the resolution should not contain any threat of sanctions or an arms embargo.

The draft “not only ignored our red lines but also added some new elements which we find unacceptable as a matter of principle,” AFP news agency reported him as saying.

“The Security Council cannot go about imposing solutions in crisis situations in various countries of the world.”

The BBC’s UN correspondent, Barbara Plett, says Russia will not support any measure that could mean regime change.

Moscow was also concerned about a warning of further measures if Syria does not comply with the resolution, fearing that this could open the door to outside intervention, our correspondent says.

Russia and China vetoed a previous draft resolution against Syria late last year.

Western nations have been hoping that Arab League support for this resolution will soften Russian resistance.

‘Long overdue’

The current draft, presented to the council by Morocco, largely supports a plan outlined by the Arab League earlier this week calling for Mr Assad to hand authority to a deputy, who would form a national unity government with the opposition within two months.

The draft resolution calls for further measures if the Syrian government does not comply with the call for political transition.

The council will not vote on the resolution until next week.

“There is now a chance that the Security Council will finally take a clear stand on Syria. That is long overdue,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

The French ambassador to the UN, Gerrard Araud described the situation in Syria as a major crisis.

“The country is sinking into civil war. We are desperately looking for a political solution,” he said.

“We have here the League of Arab States which is proposing a solution. So our reaction is simply to support it, but again, there is nothing else.”

Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, expressed anger towards the states that drafted the resolution.

“They are talking about my country without consulting us, without sharing with us their concerns, their remarks,” he said.

“They deal with us as if we are a former colony, that we should subjugate ourselves to their will. They are wrong and they will be disappointed.”

Growing violence

The UN meeting comes amid a spike in violence across Syria, with activists reporting 135 people killed in the past two days.

Gen Mustafa al-Dabi, head of the Arab League’s monitoring mission, said violence had soared “in a significant way” in recent days.

Earlier in the week, the general had claimed that the Arab League mission had helped reduce the level of violence in Syria.

Opposition forces have set up checkpoints in parts of the capital, and correspondents say forces loyal to Mr Assad appear unable to maintain control.

The UN has conceded it cannot keep track of the death toll, which it estimated as more than 5,400 people since the unrest began last March.

The government says it is fighting “terrorists and armed gangs” and claims that some 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed. BBC News

According to a report in The Washington Post newspaper, the Philippines has indicated a willingness to host American ships, surveillance aircraft and joint military exercises.

The U.S. was forced to leave its naval base in the Philippines Subic Bay in the 1990s after lawmakers rejected a new treaty.  But Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia analyst with the University of New South Wales says the Philippines’ leadership is now reaching out to the U.S. to counter China’s growing military power and continued confrontational incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.

“The Philippines’ nationalism is aroused because there are even further intrusions since last year in the Philippines waters and the Philippines has got basically a very low basis of which to even know what’s going on let alone exercise jurisdiction,” Thayer said.

The South China Sea is of tremendous strategic importance to world shipping and is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia all hold competing claims to parts of the sea.

The talk of an increased American military presence in the Philippines follows agreements to base thousands of U.S. troops in Australia and to station warships in Singapore.

Thayer is not surprised by the talk of again increasing American and Philippine ties, given that in the last few years the Philippines has been the most vocal advocate for U.S. involvement in the region, and is the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance in Southeast Asia. The United States already has about 600 Special Operations forces advising the Philippine military engaged in fighting al-Qaida linked rebels.

The U.S. takes no position on individual claims in the South China Sea, but supports a multilateral approach to settle disputes based on international maritime law and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas.

Thayer says concern about China has given the U.S. military the opening to redeploy to the Asia Pacific region to protect its own economic and strategic interests and to be welcomed as a force for stability.

“This re-balancing and the talk about Asia Pacific extends all the way down to rotating Marines through Australia, is to extend the instant reach for the United States to react to contingencies and to exhibit a constant pressure of reassurance and stability throughout the region,” Thayer said.

He says Southeast Asian support for increased U.S. involvement has forced China to reassess its strategy in the South China Sea, and to focus more on engaging counties in the region through diplomatic channels. By Brian Padden, Voice of America

Mr Hague was answering an urgent question on 24 January 2012, tabled by Conservative Robert Halfon, who wanted to know what action was being taken against the country over its nuclear ambitions.

On Monday, the European Union agreed sanctions banning all new oil contracts with Iran and freezing the assets of Iran’s central bank in the EU.

The foreign secretary said the EU’s “unprecedented” measures would put pressure on Iran to enter talks about its uranium enrichment programme.

“We are not planning to take military action in the Gulf,” he told MPs.

“We call on Iran to return to the negotiations which are at all times available to it,” Mr Hague continued.

The foreign secretary accused the Iranian regime of trying to hide its nuclear enrichment programme and said there was “no plausible civilian use” for it.

The urgent question came after Defence Secretary Philip Hammond warned that further military reinforcements could be deployed to the region following Iran’s threat to close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions.

Mr Hague confirmed the possibility of sending further Royal Navy vessels to the area, but insisted the sanctions were designed to prevent war.

“This is not a set of actions designed to lead to any conflict but to lead us away from any conflict by increasing the pressure for a peaceful settlement of these disputes,” he said.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell warned against causing “a conflagration” in the Gulf.

He wanted to know if talks had been held with other countries that had “better relations” with Iran.

Mr Hague assured Sir Menzies that discussions had been held with countries such as Oman and Turkey about the issue.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Iran, was worried that major world powers would not back the ban on Iranian oil.

“My anxiety about these sanctions is that without China and Russia on board there will be the most substantial leakages,” he said.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas claimed the sanctions could hit “ordinary Iranian citizens” rather than the regime’s leaders.

The foreign secretary sought to reassure her that Britain’s aim was the financing of Tehran’s nuclear programmes.

“These are unprecedented and wide-ranging measures which can have a wider effect,” he said.

“But that is better than the alternative of doing nothing or making a military conflict more likely,” Mr Hague concluded. BBC News

Two British and French warships and the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had entered the Gulf on Sunday to show Tehran they would not tolerate any interference with global shipping, Philip Hammond told reporters.

Iranian leaders have repeated long-standing threats to close off the Strait, which handles a fifth of the world’s oil, after the EU imposed the embargo Monday as part of sanctions to pressure Tehran into resuming talks on the country’s controversial nuclear program.

Iran summoned the Danish ambassador to Tehran on Tuesday over the EU’s oil embargo; Denmark is currently the head of the rotating EU presidency.

“Elements within the European Union, by pursuing the policies of the U.S. and adopting a hostile approach, are seeking to create tensions with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Ali Asghar Khaji, a senior Foreign Ministry official, as saying. He called the EU decision “irrational” and “without logical justification.”

Other Iranian officials argued the sanctions would not work, or could even benefit Iran.

“The oil embargo will lead to higher prices. Europe will be the loser and Iran will earn more because of high prices,” Iran’s oil ministry spokesman Ali Reza Nikzad Rahbar told state TV.

During talks in London on Tuesday, Australia said it would also sign up to the embargo — though acknowledged it currently has negligible oil imports from Iran.

The three warships — which included Britain’s HMS Argyll frigate and France’s frigate La Motte Picquet — that entered the Gulf on Sunday had sent “a clear signal about the resolve of the international community to defend the right of free passage through international waters,” Hammond said.

“We also maintain mine-counter measures vessels in the Gulf, which are an important part of the overall allied presence there, and of course the U.K. has a contingent capability to reinforce that presence should at any time it be considered necessary to do so,” he said.

Britain’s defense ministry declined to offer specific detail on what assets and personnel are currently in the Persian Gulf, but said it had about 1,500 Navy personnel in the region east of Suez, which includes the Middle East and Indian Ocean.

Four anti-mine vessels are based out of Bahrain, while Britain also has two frigates — including HMS Argyll — three support ships, a survey vessel and one hunter-killer nuclear submarine in the region, the ministry said.

In Paris, French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said the French warship, which specializes in countering submarine attacks, has since separated from the British and American warships, but remains on a “presence mission” in the Persian Gulf.

France doesn’t have plans to deploy more forces to the zone, said Burkhard, noting that France has a small base in the United Arab Emirates, which currently houses six Rafale warplanes and about 650 troops, including an infantry battalion.

The United States and allies have already warned they would take swift action against any Iranian moves to choke off the 30-mile (50-kilometer) wide Strait of Hormuz.

At the center of the dispute is international concern over Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is aimed at providing civilian power. The U.S. and other nations accuse Iran of attempting to build nuclear weapons, and Tehran is now under several rounds of U.N. sanctions over its failures to be forthcoming about its work.

Hammond said recently that Iran was “working flat out” to produce a nuclear weapon.

Australia’s foreign minister Kevin Rudd, in London with Australian defense minister Stephen Smith for talks with British counterparts, said his country would join the EU’s oil embargo.

“We in Australia will undertake precisely the same parallel actions in Australia,” Rudd said. “The reason is very clear — the message needs to be delivered to the people of Iran, the wider political elites of Iran, as well as the government of Iran that their behavior is globally unacceptable.”

Iran responded angrily to the new EU sanctions Monday, with two lawmakers escalating threats that their country would close the Strait of Hormuz. Lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said Iran had the right to shutter Hormuz in retaliation and that the closure was increasingly probable, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

“In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran’s rights,” Falahatpisheh was quoted as saying. “So far, Iran has not used this privilege.”

Some commentators are declaring that Iran should cut the flow of crude even before the new measures go into effect in July, to punish Europe, while others say the embargo is a “gift” which will allow the country to diversity its economy.

“Ineffective Western sanctions are not a threat to us, but an opportunity that has brought a lot of benefits,” Moslehi said at a gathering in the central city of Isfahan late Monday.

The measures, approved in Brussels by the EU’s 27 foreign ministers, include an immediate embargo on new contracts for crude oil and petroleum products. Existing contracts with Iran will be allowed to run until July.

Iran’s Oil Ministry said the country can find new markets.

“Iran can easily find new customers for its oil,” Mohsen Qamsari, a senior ministry official, was quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency as saying.

Some 80 percent of Iran’s foreign revenue comes from oil exports, and analysts say that any sanctions affecting its ability to export oil would hit its economy hard. With about 4 million barrels per day, Iran is the second largest producer in OPEC. It exports about 2 million barrels a day and consumes the rest domestically.

The EU has been importing about 450,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran, making up 18 percent of Iran’s oil exports.

Some in Iran said the country should stop selling oil to Europe now, instead of July, to punish the bloc before it can find suppliers to replace Iranian crude oil in the midst of winter. CBS News