Rear Adm. Ali Fadavi, of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the world could not last 24 hours without Persian Gulf oil, and that Iran is capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz.

"Today, out of the 1,300 billion barrels of oil in the world, 800 billion barrels are in the Persian Gulf," Fadavi told Iran's Press TV.

Iran threatened in late December to block the strait if sanctions were imposed on its oil exports.

France, Britain, and Germany have all proposed such sanctions to punish Iran for lack of cooperation on its nuclear program. The strait is a critical shipping lane, through which 17 million barrels of oil passed per day in 2011, CNN News reported.