The murky politics of a pipeline deal.

last updated 8 January 2015

Pakistan

Editorial

India is trying to play Iran against the U.S., said the Islamabad Nation in an editorial. India said last week that it would go ahead with a proposed gas pipeline, a joint venture to bring gas from Iran to Pakistan and on to India. But let’s not be fooled. India is just trying to put pressure on the U.S. Congress to ratify the proposed deal on nuclear cooperation. If Congress doesn’t give India the “so-called peaceful” technology it needs to “beef up its aggressive nuclear weapons program,” the threat goes, India will make a gas deal with Iran. Pakistan should operate under the assumption that the U.S. will give in to India on the nuclear deal and that India will then back out of the Iran deal. But that doesn’t mean that Pakistan and Iran can’t do the pipeline on their own. Our leader, Gen. Pervez Muharraf, personally assured Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a phone call just last week that we would stay committed to the pipeline project. For Pakistan, “the best and the safest available source” of energy “remains Iran.”