The European Union is pressing ahead with plans to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran an EU spokesman said Wednesday after Tehran threatened to close the strait of Hormuz should the sanctions applied.

The European Union is pressing ahead with plans to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran; an EU spokesman said Wednesday after Tehran threatened to close the strait of Hormuz should the sanctions applied.

“The European Union is considering another set of sanctions against Iran and we continue to do that," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, told AFP.

"We expect the decision will be taken in time for the foreign affairs council on January 30," he said, referring to the next meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The United States and the 27-nation EU are considering new sanctions aimed at Iran's oil and financial sectors. But EU governments have been divided over whether to impose an embargo on Iranian crude.

Oil from Iran in 2010 amounted to 5.8 percent of total EU imports, making Tehran the bloc's fifth-largest supplier after Russia, Norway, Libya and Saudi Arabia.

Spain represents 14.6 percent of Iranian oil imports to Europe, Greece 14.0 and Italy 13.1 percent.

More than a third of the world's tanker-borne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, linking the Gulf -- and its petroleum-exporting states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- to the Indian Ocean.

Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned on Tuesday that "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz" if the West imposed sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

For his part, Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said Wednesday that “closure of the strait is very easy for the Iranian Armed Forces. It’s just like drinking a glass of water.”