Thursday, February 17, 2011

Egypt Suez Canal told Iran warship passing scrapped

Why else would Iran be sailing up and down the Suez canal, other than to create tension in the area.
We won't find out now, it appears Egypt has told them they may not use the waterway.

Also had heard that a couple of U.S. Warships were sailing through the canal.


(Reuters) - The Suez Canal has been told that plans by two Iranian naval ships to cross the waterway were canceled, an official said on Thursday, removing a potential policy headache for Egypt's new army rulers.

It was not immediately clear which side was behind the cancellation. Any naval vessels passing through the canal, a strategic international shipping route, must first have approval from Egypt's foreign and defense ministries, officials said.

If the ships had crossed, it would have been the first time since Iran's 1979 revolution that Iranian warships had passed through the canal, officials said.

Iran's revolution poisoned ties with Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel that year.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had said plans for the two Iranian warships to sail through the canal en route to Syria were a "provocation." He had said the ships were expected to pass through the Suez Canal overnight on Wednesday.

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