News of Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka fueling affairs with Iran follow The RIA Novosti publication:
1. http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD30Ak02.html
2. http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html

1.

Middle East
Apr 30, 2008

Iran holds key to India’s energy insecurity
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

In the rapidly intensifying international energy game, Iran holds a master key to the most staggering roadblock to India’s economic growth - energy insecurity. With the issue of energy cooperation expected to dominate talks on Tuesday between visiting Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his hosts in New Delhi, a new chapter in India-Iran relations is on the horizon that will likely bring the two countries closer together on a long-term basis.

While not an official state visit, since it is Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s turn to visit Iran, Ahmadinejad’s brief yet significant stopover after his trips to Sri Lanka and Pakistan has been widely interpreted by the global media as a landmark development that will usher in a new era of energy cooperation between energy-starving India and energy-rich Iran...

Sure, India has other prospects besides Iran and, in addition to investing in Yemeni oil fields and negotiating with Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, questing for a piece of the Iraqi energy market and scouting various African countries (such as Nigeria, Chad, Angola, Cameron and Congo), Indian officials have also been playing catch-up with China in Central Asia lately, seeking deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

But with the Turkmenistan’s proximity to Iran and Iran’s ability to act as an energy corridor for the sub-continent, the salient importance of Iran is indisputable.

In addition to the US$7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, India has set its eyes on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline that is, for now at least, more of a pipedream because of growing insecurity in Afghanistan, reflected in the bold assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai in Kabul this week.

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan has called for a United Nations convention on pipeline security, but few expect that the opponents of the government in Kabul, which has limited control outside the capital, will honor any such conventions...

Thus, with the TAPI put on hold pending security developments in Afghanistan, India, which has come out empty handed from its recent gas efforts with respect to, among others, Myanmar and Bangladesh, has woken to the simple fact that nearly all roads lead to Tehran.

So, instead of TAPI, a revised TIPI (Turkmenistan-Iran-Pakistan-India) may be plotted, whereby Turkmenistan’s plentiful gas reserves can reach both India and Pakistan. This is not to mention Iran’s ability to expand its present oil-swap agreements, for example with Kazakhstan, whereby India could collect at Iran’s Persian Gulf terminals the equivalent of what the Kazakhs, or for that matter Azerbaijanis or even Russians, deliver at Iran’s northern and Caspian points. Iran’s hitherto ill-explored oil riches in its Caspian sector are also a candidate for joint ventures with Indian companies.

Already, beginning in 2005, Iran and India have entered into a $40 billion, 25-year LNG (liquefied natural gas) agreement, and India, along with China, is a (30%) shareholder of a joint company to develop Iran’s largest oil field, the Yadavaran. Iran and India have also reached an agreement for development of Chahbahar and construction of a highway from that port city to Afghanistan and Central Asia, as part and parcel of the ambitious project known as the North-South Corridor.

The Oil Ministry in Tehran posits India as the fourth-largest consumer of Iran’s energy, while India, which imports more than two thirds of its oil needs, anticipates this figure to increase by up to 90% by 2030...

Maybe then US lawmakers will realize why their Indian counterparts have risked violating US sanctions laws on Iran that forbid such bold initiatives by New Delhi toward Iran. And these, by all accounts, are not limited to energy, but include the entire gamut of economic, trade, cultural, political and even security cooperation.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of “Negotiating Iran’s Nuclear Populism”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote “Keeping Iran’s nuclear potential latent”, Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran’s Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

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ON the End

Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border
17:31 | 27/ 03/ 2007

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

“The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran,” the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran “that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.”

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future.

A new U.S. carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December 2006.

The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.