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| Pakistan tests U.S. will with Iran pipeline |
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NEW YORK - Although the United Nations has never imposed sanctions on Iran's energy sector, the U.S. government has opposed a decision by Pakistan to proceed with a much-delayed pipeline from Iran on the grounds that this would put Islamabad in “violation of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program”. It seems the US has once again mistaken its own laws for that of the international community.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, on Monday inaugurated the construction of the 781-kilometer Pakistani side of the 1,600-kilometer pipeline. Dubbed the “peace pipeline”, the project was first mooted in 1994 as a tripartite Iran-Pakistan-India project. (In 2009, despite its pressing energy needs, India opted out of the deal under U.S. pressure.)
As is to be expected, the mainstream Western media has taken a negative view of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline. It has referred to the project as a “pipe dream”, citing the unlikelihood that Pakistan would be able to come up with the US$1.5 billion financing to complete a link that, once completed, would pump 750 million cubic feet of natural gas into the energy-starved Pakistani economy each day.
The skepticism is unwarranted. Plagued by power shortages and the rising energy demands of a growing economy, this pipeline is “in Pakistan's national interest”, as Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar stated recently.
The two countries have also signed an accord for a 400,000 barrel capacity oil refinery in Gwadar, in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province. Foreign experts, such as Dan Millison of Asian Development Bank (ADB), concur. Millison has defended an ADB assessment of the “peace pipeline” based purely on economic grounds and the rising energy demands from the subcontinent.
The big question is: once the Iran-Pakistan pipeline is completed, will India be able to resist the temptation to renew its presently dormant quest to connect to it? In 2005, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated, “We are terribly short of energy supply, and we desperately need new sources of energy.”
From the United States’ point of view, the significance of the Ahmadinejad-Zardari announcement at the Iran-Pakistan border is fourfold. Firstly, this deal represents the first major international defiance of unilateral U.S. energy sanctions on Iran. Its significance extends beyond the bilateral relations of two neighbors in Asia and may well serve as an example to follow by other nations.
[State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said later: “We have serious concerns, if this project actually goes forward, that the Iran Sanctions Act would be triggered,” according to an Agence France-Presse report. “We've been straight up with the Pakistanis about these concerns. We've heard this pipeline announced about 10 or 15 times before in the past. So we have to see what actually happens,” the report cited her as saying.]
Secondly, the pipeline deal is a timely break for Tehran, which is reeling under Western economic pressures. It weakens the politics of leverage at nuclear negotiations with Iran which are currently at turning point.
The third reason why the pipeline news is bad news for the U.S. is that it puts Washington on a confrontation course with Pakistan, its important partner in the “war on terror” who is destined to play a key role in Afghanistan in the aftermath of U.S.'s planned withdrawal in 2014. The U.S.'s dilemma is how to look for a greater stability role from a country that it is now threatening it with (collateral) sanctions under the U.S. Sanctions Act?
Fourthly, the U.S. is quietly concerned about a future turn-around by India that emulates Pakistan's defiance. A successful Pakistani bid to overcome U.S. pressure could embolden New Delhi to renew its bid for gas pipeline from Iran.
If that happens, the U.S. will have to bite the bullet to avoid major turmoil in its India policy, or face a major pile up of its foreign policy headaches worldwide. A litmus test of post-Cold War U.S. hegemony, the success and or failure of U.S.'s sanctions policy on Iran covers the entire gamut of U.S.'s global policy and global leadership.
To prevent the issue spiraling, a more realistic U.S. policy toward Iran is needed -- one that recognizes the feasibility of a “suspension for suspension” agreement, whereby Iran would stop its 20% uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of major sanctions.
The pipeline agreement underlines that the U.S. is isolating itself in the battle over Iran. U.S. sanctions laws on Iran are simply rules without a game-plan, and the sooner the U.S. lawmakers come to this realization, the better.
(Source: Asia Times Online)   Socialize this Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay in touch and receive all of TT updates right in your feed reader
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