Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a three-nation tour of Asia on Monday with stops scheduled for Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India in attempts to strengthen diplomatic and trading relations with the South Asian countries.
High on his agenda is business related to the $7.8 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project. With construction expected to begin in 2009, the "Peace Pipeline" will ultimately supply the Asian nations with 150 million cubic meters of Iranian gas daily, a significant contribution towards the growing demand in the region.
Despite vocal opposition to the project from the United States, Ahmadinejad is being warmly embraced by officials in both Islamabad and New Dehli. Tonight, he will attend a " private dinner ," reserved for the most special foreign guests, hosted by Indian PM Manmohan Singh. "It is an important gesture that shows India attaches great importance to developing relations with Iran," according to official sources.
The deal comes as a proposed U.S.-India nuclear energy project appears in doubt due to powerful Leftist opposition in India, and New Delhi's public rejection of Washington's advice to take a harder line in negotiating with Iran.
Naturally, the Iranians pounced on this snub and used it as an opportunity to suggest they had the best interest of the Indian people in mind . "We know this cooperation will help the people of the region and raise their economic condition," the Iranian ambassador to India, Syed Mehdi Nabizadeh, said. "We are neighbors. More cooperation will have positive effect on the region and on the economics of the region." And the Ambassador speculated there was more to come. "The bilateral trade between Iran and India now stands at over $ 9 billion and it is expected that the figure would rise three to four times within coming five years," he said.
The U.S. Navy fired on two Iranian boats that were acting in an "unclear manner" and failed to respond to warnings. The incident took place in the Central Arabian Gulf, the narrow waterway that is the world's busiest oil shipping route. Though denied by Iran, the incident comes as the U.S. military warned the flow of weapons from Iran to Iraq has increased recently .
"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activity some months ago," U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way."As the commander of Israel's air force put it in a must-read interview with 60 Minutes , "[Iran] is a very serious threat to the state of Israel, but more than this to the whole world."
Finally, Iran continues to have a friend in Russia and has sought help from Moscow in trying to persuade the world that its nuclear program will be used to generate electricity, not weapons. Despite such efforts, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, China (and Russia) have continued to offer political, security, and economic incentives to Iran in return for stopping its uranium enrichment. But Tehran continues to insist it will not give up its "rights" (to make electricity?) for such incentives. Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, insisted Monday that "we don't negotiate the rights of the Iranian nation with anybody."
