Will the US block an Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline?

US officials have been fighting to stop a $7.5 billion gas pipeline that would transport natural gas between Iran and Pakistan, Alic writes.

|
Vahid Salemi/AP/File
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, shake hands for photographers at the start of their meeting in Tehran, Iran, to discuss a gas pipeline deal. The US State Department has warned of sanctions, Alic writes, but is keeping a low profile on direct threats until the pipeline deal is sealed.

Next week Iran and Pakistan will begin work on a $7.5 billion gas pipeline that the US has been fighting tooth and nail to stop in all manner of proxy methods.

On 11 March, Pakistani officials braved the “international community” by announcing that “groundbreaking” work on the 780-kilometer pipeline would begin on the Pakistani side of the border, marking the start of construction by an Iranian-Pakistani consortium.

Just prior to the announcement, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.

The Pakistani portion of the pipeline will cost around $1.5 billion. This is the key here because the 900-kilometer Iranian portion of the pipeline is already nearing completion. 

The pipeline will go ahead largely because Pakistan’s energy crisis dictates that it must. And even US sanctions won’t prevent it, and threats emanating from Washington (largely through the US mainstream media) are only working to increase already volatile anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. (Related article: RUSSIA-ISRAEL: New Oil & Gas Geopolitics in the Mediterranean)

The US State Department has warned of sanctions, but is keeping a low profile on direct threats until the pipeline deal is sealed. It’s still working the back rooms to stop the deal, but Iran is working even harder—namely by putting up the bulk of the funding for the Pakistani portion of the pipeline.

So far, while the US has promised to offer Pakistan a better deal than a pipeline with Iran, we haven’t seen anything concrete that can compete with this type of energy security. After all, the pipeline will bring Pakistan some 21.5 million cubic meters of gas a day.

The US had been hoping to lure Pakistani into an alternative pipeline deal – the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would bypass Iran. The TAPI pipeline, however, is a stop-and-start project that has its own security issues to deal with: it would be either targeted by the Taliban or the Taliban would have to be figured in as benefactors, which would mean much for the conflict in Afghanistan. Even the most optimistic observers put a completion date at around 2018.

Washington remains adamant that the pipeline is a violation of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. But Islamabad is unmoved by the threats and President Zardari has intimated that the pipeline deal will go through despite external influence.

"Nobody has the power to halt this project," he was quoted by The Express Tribune newspaper in Pakistan as saying. (Related article: TURKEY-ISRAEL: Gas Pipeline Rumors Are Geopolitically Tectonic)

Of course, it’s not an easy time for Zardari, whose five-year term is coming to an end, leaving open a window of opportunity for external influence in the election process to various ends. Pakistan's parliament is due to dissolve in two weeks in preparation for elections that will tentatively be held in mid-May.

There are other ways to sabotage this pipeline as well. The pipeline runs through some extremely insecure territory in Balochistan, which is likely to become a new (old) frontline in regional pipeline wars in the immediate-medium-term future.

The US and Saudi Arabia are willing to go quite far in derailing this project. They’ve already succeeded to some extent. Originally, the pipeline was meant to include India and was dubbed the “Peace Pipeline”.

Under pressure from Washington (plus a controversially generous gift of civilian nuclear technology access), India backed out in 2009.

So with India out of the equation, all attention turned to another front to derail this pipeline—Balochistan. The US and Saudi Arabia are both fomenting separatism in Balochistan, which is a convenient venue for stirring up trouble. The Pakistani province has huge gas reserves and vast mineral resources, coupled with an ongoing, armed dispute between economically, culturally and socially marginalized Balochi nationalists who have serious grievances against Pakistan's Punjab-dominated federal government.

Iran has a problem with Balochi separatists, the latter occasionally clashing with Iranian forces in Baloch-dominated regions across the border. The US is hoping that if the Balochis are empowered to step up the conflict, Iran could be forced to back down from its pipeline plans in light of the security situation. So far, this proxy war in Balochistan has been a major hindrance to Iran, but the end result is that it has only further inspired the pipeline plans.

Original source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/How-Far-Will-the-US-Go-to-Derail-Iran-Pakistan-Pipeline.html

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Will the US block an Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0305/Will-the-US-block-an-Iran-Pakistan-gas-pipeline
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe