ABU DHABI/TEHRAN: Coast guards and naval forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council group of Arab countries have contingency plans for a possible attempt by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a Kuwaiti maritime official said Monday.Five of the six GCC members – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait – rely on the world’s most important energy shipping lane being open to export most of their oil or gas.

Tehran has threatened to close the narrow shipping lane between Oman, the only GCC member which does not depend on Hormuz, and Iran if Western sanctions aimed at starving Iran’s disputed nuclear program of funds stop it from selling oil.

The GCC members, which also rely on the 6.4-kilometer-wide channel being open to import food for their growing populations, has now drawn up a contingency plan in case Iran acts on its threats.

“Exporting oil or importing goods and cargo through Hormuz is a main concern for the GCC,” Commander Mubarak Ali al-Sabah, chief of maritime operations at Kuwait’s Coast Guard, told Reuters in an interview.

“The GCC has a plan as a body – not just Kuwait separately or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia – we have a plan, we just hope that everything stays safe,” Sabah said, without giving details of the plans.

“Awareness and understanding of the consequences of it has increased,” he said. “We have plans how to deal with this but didn’t do field exercises on it.”

Sabah said the planning included coordinating both between coast guards and navies of GCC countries and with Western naval forces patrolling the area – including U.S., Australian and French navies.

Kuwaiti and Iranian coast guards hold regular meetings on how to manage their shared maritime border, with the next one scheduled for next month.

“We don’t go into politics or speak about other issues, just what concerns the coast guards and how we can work it out,” he said.

Oil tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz are estimated at around 16 million barrels per day, or just under a fifth of global oil supplies.

A new pipeline from the UAE’s oilfields to the Gulf of Oman could carry most of the Gulf OPEC oil producer’s exports if Hormuz were to be blocked.

But even a brief disruption to shipping could stop most of the oil exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Iraq from leaving the Gulf, along with liquefied natural gas from leading supplier Qatar.

In December, the U.S. Fifth Fleet said it would not tolerate any disruption of traffic in Hormuz but analysts say Iran might be able to hinder traffic transiting the strait by scattering mines in it.

“In any navy plan that exists there would be plans for swift coordination to de-mine areas that might have been mined ... Or act in coordination preemptively or reactively to prevent Iranian small vessels disrupting shipping,” said Christian Le Miere, research fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Earlier this month, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned Arab neighbors not to side with the United States in the escalating dispute over Tehran’s nuclear activities which the West says includes weapons development and Tehran insists are limited to electricity production.

The U.S. and the EU have imposed the toughest sanctions yet in a drive to force Tehran to provide more information on its nuclear program. The measures take direct aim at the ability of OPEC’s second biggest oil exporter to sell its crude.

On Monday, with a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, visiting Iran, Salehi urged the European Union and the U.S. to “replace their policy of sanctions with interaction” with the Islamic Republic. He said the nuclear delegation, originally planned for three days, could choose to extend its stay if it wishes, according to reports from the official IRNA news agency.

“We are very optimistic on the results of the IAEA trip. They are here for a three-day trip, and if they want, it [the mission] could be extended,” Salehi was quoted by IRNA as telling Turkish broadcaster TRT in an interview in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit.

The six-person IAEA team of senior inspectors, led by IAEA chief inspector Herman Nackaerts and including the agency’s deputy director general began their visit to Iran Sunday but was due to wrap up Tuesday.

It was not known which Iranian officials the IAEA team was speaking with, nor was it confirmed whether it was carrying out inspections of suspect sites.

The visit aims at defusing tensions between Iran and the West that have soared since a November IAEA report that strongly suggested Tehran was researching nuclear weapons. Iran has dismissed the report as biased.

The U.S. defense chief said Sunday Iran could develop a nuclear bomb in about a year and create the means for delivery in a further two to three years.