Page 3 of 3 Gas: Iran turns up the heat By M K Bhadrakumar
way for Gazprom to
have a role in the management of the entire Asian
gas pipeline network. The prospects of
Turkmenistan joining such a system are brighter
than ever before.
In other words, we're
talking seriously for the first time about the
prospect of a gas market uniting Turkmenistan,
Iran, Pakistan, India and China. This is where a
breakthrough in the protracted negotiations over
the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project could
become a defining moment for
energy politics in Eurasia.
Russia is not
in competition with Iran in tapping the South
Asian market for gas. It is expedient for Russia
if Iran gets deeply engaged in the Asian market
(which includes two energy guzzlers - China and
India) and, that, too, with Russian equity
participation in the actual construction of Iran's
pipeline to South Asia. That could lead to
Gazprom's participation in the highly lucrative
distribution and retailing of Iranian gas in
Pakistan, India and China.
In geopolitical
terms, what merits attention will be the prospects
of an "energy club" taking shape within the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) framework.
Significantly, the foreign ministers of India,
Russia and China are to meet in New Delhi in a
trilateral format this month. Meanwhile, the
Indian foreign minister has just concluded a visit
to Iran, setting the requisite political climate
for accelerated energy cooperation.
Russia
sees advantages in developing an "energy club"
within the SCO. Putin proposed such an idea at the
SCO summit last June. The Russian objective is to
bring together major energy producers and key
consumers within the ambit of SCO, which would not
only lead to coordination of efforts in joint
energy production and transportation projects but
also strengthen regional security on the whole,
apart from reinforcing the multipolarity of the
world order. The SCO consists of China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Iran has observer status.
Alarm bells must
be ringing in Washington. Has the clock begun
ticking for a SCO "energy club"? Is the world
order becoming irreversibly multipolar? To be
sure, the tensions around the Iran nuclear issue
that Washington has ratcheted up are proving
counterproductive. They have prompted Tehran to
draw close to Moscow and, arguably, to expedite
the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.
US-Russia standoff Ironically,
expanding Russian-Iranian energy cooperation
coincides with the first US deployments of its
missile defense system in Central Europe, on the
pretext of countering an Iranian threat.
At a press conference in Moscow on
February 1, Putin brusquely dismissed the US
reasoning on the tests. He said, "Our military
experts do not think that the missile defense
systems the United States wants to deploy in
Eastern Europe are aimed at countering threats
from, say, Iran ... The trajectories of missiles
fired from Iranian territory are already well
known. And they do not have ballistic missiles
either. They have medium-range missiles ... We
think therefore that these [US] arguments do not
carry much weight. This does directly concern us,
of course, and it will lead to an appropriate
response. As I already said, our response will be
asymmetrical, but it will be highly effective."
The specter of a nuclear arms race being
forced on Russia haunts the Kremlin. Nothing
brings this home more than the Russian proposal to
Washington to conclude a non-aggression pact
("legally binding agreements guaranteeing that
their military potentials will not be targeted
against each other"). Russia-Iran cooperation
seems to gather pace almost in direct proportion
to the deterioration of Russian-US relations.
Moscow's post-haste delivery of Tor-M1 air-defense
systems to Iran in December was extraordinary.
Former Russian prime minister Yevgeni
Primakov last week summed up the calculus: "Russia
is on the way to becoming one of the pillars, if
you like, one of the centers, of the multipolar
world and one should reckon with Russia ... The
Americans will have to retreat, they are at a dead
end, and they don't know how to back out of it.
They understand it and they are now turning to the
United Nations ... Our task is, together with
Europe, together with China, together with India,
to make sure that a world order that emerges is
based on stability."
Primakov added, "You
see, we want the American hegemonistic
aggressiveness to be blunted. Objectively, things
will be moving in this direction because giants
such as China and India are rising. By the way,
the combined GDP [gross domestic product] of China
and India is exceeding that of the United States
and they are growing 2.5 times faster than the
United States."
Significantly, the adviser
to Iran's Supreme Leader on international affairs
and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati
arrived in Moscow on Thursday for follow-up
consultations over Ivanov's talks in Tehran.
Velayati played a key role, along with
then-Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, in
laying the foundation for Iran-Russia strategic
cooperation in the mid-1990s.
In sum, as
weeks and months pass, we may get used to the idea
of a gas analogue of OPEC - an idea, incidentally,
that Putin first mooted in 2003. It is immaterial
whether someone calls it "gas OPEC". It isn't the
cartel ideology that matters. After all, it isn't
all about natural gas, either.
M K
Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years,
with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
