This is why Bush wants to bomb Iran -- to stop pipeline from Iran, through Pakistan, to India

The days of US control of the world's energy sources are OVER. That's

OVER -- as in THE END -- as in "the fat lady is singing." Only Bush and Co.

are too damn stupid to see it.

China and India are industrializing and when over 2 BILLION people -- which

is almost one-third of the world's population demand natural gas and crude

oil, someone's going to sell it to them. And -- we are 10,000 miles away --

China and India are neighbors.

QUOTE

U.S. Stands in the Way of International Pipeline Deal

By Abbas Maleki, MIT Center for International Studies

Posted on October 30, 2007, Printed on October 31, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/65315/

A major natural gas pipeline that would stretch from the fields of southern

Iran to Pakistan and India -- itself a remarkable prospect -- is being

planned. But it faces serious hurdles, not least the fierce opposition of

the U.S. government.

The history of relations between Persia and the Indian subcontinent is more

than 2000 years old. Until 200 years ago, Persian was the language of

literature and government in India. After separation of Pakistan from India,

Iran faced a dilemma of its relations with these two new states. During the

Shah's era, Iran preferred to have close relations with Pakistan, although

economic ties with India were not ignored. After the collapse of the Soviet

Union and Pakistan's support of hardliners in Afghanistan, Iran found India

as a new partner in Asia. India has been slowly but surely forging a

comprehensive relationship with Iran on energy and commerce, infrastructure

development, and military ties. Iran looks to India as a developed,

democratic, and politically lucrative country for cooperation. For instance,

some 8,000 Iranian students are studying in India, compared with 2,000 in

the United States.

A big market for India, Iran has the world's second largest oil and gas

proven reserves, and acts as an important access route for India to Central

Asia and Afghanistan. Case in point: India is seeking new routes to reach to

Central Asia. One of them is the North-South Corridor, which links India to

Russia and all of the former Soviet Union via the Persian Gulf, Iran and

Caspian Sea. Iran's considerations are boosting trade, having secure

borders, and avoiding "encirclement" by American proxies. At the same time,

Iran is opposed to the hegemonic presence of the United States and its

troops in the Indian Ocean. India has not been hesitant to play the Iran

card to draw concessions from the United States on other matters of

bilateral concern. So the pipeline is freighted with more significance than

merely the delivery of natural gas.

The Scope of the Proposal

The Iran-Pakistan-India Pipeline (IPI) would run totally 2,670 km (1,660

miles), about 1,115 km (690 miles) in Iran, 705 km (440 miles) in Pakistan

and 850 km (530 miles) in India, and the total investment is estimated at $7

billion and may take four to five years to complete. Apart from the fact

that the IPI pipeline makes good economic sense, particularly in promoting

regional cooperation, it is immensely important to the on-going peace

process between India and Pakistan. A number of observers of the

India-Pakistan conflict have termed this project as the mother of all

confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan and named it the

Peace Pipeline.

The project has been dealt a major jolt by the news that New Delhi and

Islamabad have rejected the draft final agreement circulated by Iran, which

calls for a three-year review cycle on the gas price. Causing yet another

delay in the trilateral deal, the pricing dispute will either be resolved by

a new round of negotiations or turn into an unbridgeable difference putting

the IPI's fate under question marks. Prior to his resignation in early

August 2007, Iran's petroleum minister, Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, had announced

that the seventh round of negotiations for the IPI contract would be held in

Tehran on July 29, 2007. It did not happen and, what is more, a former

Iranian deputy oil minister, Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, has questioned the deal

on the ground that it gives a huge discount to India and is some 30 percent

below the value of gas sold to Turkey. Another Iranian politician, Akbar

Mohtashemipour, from Iran's reformist side, has publicly questioned the

wisdom of exporting Iran's gas at a time when the cold regions of Iran face

gas shortages. The IPI issue has been moved to Iran's Foreign Ministry, and

during the past year and a half, the Iranian negotiation team has changed

three times.

Interestingly, the Asian Development Bank has assessed that the deal is

feasible. Dan Millison, ADB's senior energy specialist, said that the ADB's

assessment was based purely on economic grounds and the rising demand for

energy from India and Pakistan.

American Pressure

The U.S. position, however, is not linked to the economic side of the deal.

It is driven by strategic politics, by Washington's Iran policy. The United

States, which has had adversarial relations with Iran since the 1979

revolution, has been accusing Iran for some years of harboring

nuclear-weapon ambitions. The U.S. has been trying to heighten the UN

Security Council sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and has

voiced its opposition to the IPI pipeline as part of that strategy.

Last year, a senior U.S. state department official, Steven Mann, stated that

the United States is unequivocally against the deal. "The U.S. government

supports multiple pipelines from the Caspian region but remains absolutely

opposed to pipelines involving Iran." Washington fears that the deal will be

a blow to its efforts to isolate Iran. Since the deal involves Pakistan and

India, two countries that are friendly with Washington, the Bush

administration has been trying to pressure both to back off the deal.

India has come under greater pressure because New Delhi and Washington are

steadily getting closer. The two sides have signed a deal which bestows on

India's nuclear capability a legitimacy that has not come the way of any

other state outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But part of the quid pro

quo may be that India should get out of the Iran pipeline deal.

American strategic thinkers view India as an ally vis-