If the IPI deal wins out, it will send an uplifting message about Iran-Pakistan-India collaboration, also a sobering one about AmericaÕs international clout.

Iran, Pakistan and India will sign a deal this month to build a natural gas pipeline to help feed the subcontinent’s desperate need for energy, indeed a major blow to illegal US-led sanctions against Tehran and a defeat for US influence in South Asia.
The $7.5 billion “Peace Pipeline“ (IPI) project would bring gas from the South Pars gas fields through Balochistan (in Western Pakistan) into India. The project has stalled multiple times since first proposed in 1994 due to political tensions, changing governments, conflicts over prices, and most recently, the weight of American opposition.
However, the new agreement comes amid growing tension between the United States and Iran, which the US has sought to isolate from the world community with little or no results.
Rising fuel prices and a soaring Indian economy seem to have outweighed America’s desires--as well as a rival plan for a US-backed pipeline from Turkmenistan.
Though Iran and Pakistan finalized a deal earlier this spring, India remained noncommittal. IPI advocates say the reluctance was due to American pressure: The 2006 US-India nuclear agreement puts pressure upon India to cooperate with American foreign policy goals, and bolstering the Iranian economy through oil imports is hardly on Washington’s to-do list.
Riskier, perhaps, is Pakistan’s fall-back: To bring the oil down the Himalayas into China, since Islamabad gets transit fees regardless of where the pipeline ends. Though actually building a line to China would be difficult, “Pakistan is smart to talk about China,“ says Thomas Pickering, former US Ambassador to India and Russia.
The China threat seems to have jostled India. After talks with Iranian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora made a surprise announcement June 23 that he too is ready to move forward.
Since his announcement, Deora says he’s been “continuously meeting“ with Iranian and Pakistani officials and expects a formal agreement by month’s end.
Meanwhile, an American-backed alternative languishes. The TAPI plan, to bring gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India, would keep Iran out and diminish Russian influence in Central Asia.
But projected costs have doubled since 2002 to $7.6 billion, and energy experts remain skeptical of the new number, given that the pipeline passes directly through war-torn Afghanistan.
Former World Bank economist and energy expert John Foster believes TAPI proponents are underestimating their budget in order to compete more aggressively with the IPI plan. “There are some games going on with that number,“ he says.
There are doubts too about TAPI’s output: the Asian Development Bank, financier for the project, has yet to reveal data regarding Turkmenistan’s energy resources.
As a result, says Deora, “TAPI is at a very primitive stage. We’re not even sure if there’s gas there, or how much.“
India’s growing economy, he says, cannot wait any longer for an energy lifeline. In 2007, when global energy consumption rose 3 percent, India accounted for a third of that growth.

Strategic Advantage
As things stand, in today’s economy, energy is increasingly more important to development, not only as a resource for cars and computers, but as a powerful commodity market. For Pakistan, the IPI brings $200 million a year in transit fees and a form of strategic advantage over its larger, wealthier neighbor.
According to IRNA, American opposition or not, the IPI project seems to be headed for a formal contract signing this summer.
On paper, India and Pakistan may have addressed US objections by allowing each nation to organize its own leg of pipeline construction. In previous rounds of talks, Gazprom and British Petroleum surfaced as potential bidders.
Behind the scenes, however, officials admit that the South Asian nations are simply ignoring American directives.
Noor Jehan Panezai, MP, who represents the region in western Pakistan where the pipeline will run, welcomes the plan as an employment package for her constituents.
“Indians and Pakistanis,“ she says, “will choose our own projects. We have decided that the United States has no business in our problems.“
Given the crucial role India and Pakistan play in American strategy, experts say it is unlikely that Washington will punish its allies politically or financially for dealing with Iran.
Until the deal is inked, however America may exert desperate efforts behind the scenes. If the IPI deal wins out, it will send an uplifting message about Iran-Pakistan-India collaboration, also a sobering one about America’s international clout.

Israeli civilians look on as a Palestinian drives a bulldozer along Jaffa Road in Beit-ul-Moqaddas on July 2 after ramming and overturning a bus before being shot dead by police.

A Palestinian man plowed an enormous construction vehicle into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy street Wednesday, killing at least three Israelis and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by an off-duty soldier.
Traffic was halted and hundreds of people fled in panic through the streets in the heart of downtown Beit-ul-Moqaddas as medics treated the wounded, AP reported.
Three Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for the attack, but Israeli police referred to the attacker as a “terrorist“ acting on his own.
The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of the Associated Press and other media outlets. A TV camera captured the huge front loader crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier killing the perpetrator by shooting him in the head several times at point-blank range as onlookers screamed.
A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was overturned and another bus was heavily damaged. Israel’s national rescue service confirmed three deaths, and the bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic.
During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in late 2000, Biet-ul-Moqaddas experienced dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. The city has been largely quiet in the past three years, though sporadic attacks have persisted. In March, a Palestinian gunman entered a Beit-ul-Moqaddas seminary and killed eight young students.
The three organizations that took responsibility for the attack included the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The other two are the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is suspected of being affiliated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a fringe left-wing militant group.
The Hamas militant group, which runs the Gaza Strip and is currently maintaining a fragile cease-fire with Israel, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it.“We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands,“ said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
Despite the Palestinian claims of responsibility, Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone.
Abbas aide Saeb Erekat condemned the violence.
“We condemn any attacks that target civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinians, and President Abbas has been consistent in his position to condemn any attacks that target civilians,“ he said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday said that the tragedy of downing an Iranian commercial plane by the US Navy in 1988 shows, among other things, that that country has reached the end of the road, and bullying and hegemony have become museum pieces, IRNA reported.
Addressing a Cabinet meeting he added, “This criminal act is a direct consequence of their stance, ideology and theories vis-ˆ-vis global developments. Such a standpoint has prevailed for almost 200 years. They consider any action legitimate to meet their materialistic and hegemonic aims.“
He went on to say that “The US warship killed 290 innocent people. What is worse, they decorated the people who committed this ominous crime.“
Despite the propaganda war that America has launched against world public opinion, its internal condition is much worse than it may seem, and the Americans too cannot control the situation.
On July 3, 1988 an Iranian commercial plane en route Dubai via Bandar Abbass was hit by two missiles fired from the US Navy warship USS Vincennes, killing 290 people and crew on board, including 66 children.

ISTANBUL, Turkey, July 2--Turkish police have arrested two retired generals on suspicion of plotting against the popular Islamic-leaning government as the chasm between the premier and the country’s seculars widened.
Just after Tuesday’s arrests, Turkey’s top prosecutor laid out his case in court that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan party has undermined the secularism enshrined in the constitution and should be disbanded, AP reported.
Erdogan’s government has been locked for years in a power struggle with secular groups supported by the military and other state institutions, including the judiciary.
He has faced a secularist backlash over suspicions that the government has an Islamic agenda and is trying to dilute the western lifestyle of many Turks.
A year ago, the divide deepened when the constitutional court rejected government legislation to permit head scarves at universities.
Since taking power in November 2002, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, which enjoys deep-rooted popularity among Turks, has repeatedly denied that it is trying to impose religion on politics and society.
Erdogan says that his party’s opponents undermine democracy by plotting to overthrow the legitimately elected government, and says the reforms it made to permit eventual entry into the European Union are proof of that.
He denied on Tuesday that the police operation in which the two former generals and 18 other people were arrested was politically motivated. Turkish police launched simultaneous raids in at least three provinces.
Dozens of suspects, including retired military officers, have previously been detained during the investigation against an alleged network of extreme nationalists called “Ergenekon“.
But former generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur, who were detained Tuesday, were the highest-ranking ex-soldiers to be arrested so far. Eruygur was a major organizer in anti-government rallies last year.
The Justice and Development Party holds a comfortable majority in Parliament, having won its second mandate last year after a long confrontation with the secularist opposition backed by the judiciary and the military.

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said Wednesday that Iran would react “fiercely“ to any attack against it, which he warned would drastically push up crude prices.
“If there are any kind of activity, Iran will not remain silent respond forcefully,“ he told reporters on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress when asked what Tehran would do in the event of an attack, AFP reported.
“When just a statement (about a possible attack) makes this much volatility in the market, can you imagine if any action happens ... what would be the result in the oil market?“ he said through a translator.
When questioned about whether Iran, the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter, would stop exports as a result of an attack, he replied: “Iran has been always a reliable source of supply to the market and Iran remains a supplier forever.“
There has been a surge in speculation recently that Israel might be planning a military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites. Nozari also ruled out increasing supply to cool record crude prices.
“We have got some spare capacity for production. At the same time, there is no need for more supply of oil to the market,“ he said.
Consumer nations have been pressing Iran and fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase supply to bring down prices of more than 140 dollars a barrel.

Secretary General of Organization of Islamic Conference Ekmeleddin úhsanoglu said Wednesday the organization supports Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.