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WASHINGTON – The anti-American feelings Pakistan has, coupled with Iran’s concerns over U.S. and Israeli intentions to bomb its nuclear facilities, have brought Islamabad and Tehran closer together regarding a 1,300-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from Iran, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
The deal is going forward despite opposition from Washington, which still hasn’t apologized as the Pakistanis have demanded for the accidental killing of 24 Pakistani guards along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border last November.
Pakistan is proceeding with plans for the pipeline to bring some 750 million cubic feet of gas a day from a massive offshore South Pars field in the Persian Gulf for the next 25 years.
Work on the $1.6 billion deal begins later this year and it should be completed by December 2014.
Iran is to finance the project since Islamabad doesn’t have the money.
While both countries are Muslim nations, Pakistan is predominantly Sunni while Iran is mostly Shi’ite.
Yet, they have agreed to work on this project just as they did on another 560-mile pipeline up to the Pakistani border.
Washington unsuccessfully was putting pressure on Islamabad to pull out of the project.
But reinforcing Pakistan’s strong opposition to Washington is Islamabad’s belief that the intelligence services of the U.S., Israel and India are trying to get Pakistan’s western-most province of Baluchistan to secede from Pakistan.
It is through Baluchistan that the pipeline would need to traverse.
In 1996, the pipeline to extract Iranian oil originally was going to be built through Pakistan to go to India but Washington had objected to it because it would help Iran.
For Pakistan, the deal has become an energy imperative to the point that Islamabad’s Petroleum Minister Asim Hussein has warned that Pakistan’s entire energy system could collapse unless there is a massive infusion of natural gas
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