Iran moving into the big league

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's three-nation tour of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India and the welter of agreements and understandings reached between Tehran and these governments serve notice beyond the mere issue of energy security and Iran's expanding role in the sub-continent's energy market; rather, these developments signify a new stage in Iran's foreign policy that is best described as "pan-regionalism".

From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia and beyond, thanks to its unique geographical location, Iran is in many ways an ideal connecting bridge that has not until now fully exploited its advantageous "equidistance" from India and Europe.

Straddled between the two energy hubs of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, Iran is a suitable conduit for trade, energy and non-energy, between the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the landlocked Central Asian states. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Also, with ambitious transportation links projected under the veneer of a "north-south corridor", Iran, Russia and India have conceived new areas of cooperation that connect northern Europe to the Indian Ocean via Iran and the Russian Federation <1> . Already, Iran is an energy exporter to Europe through Turkey, funneling through Turkmenistan's gas and swapping oil with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

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The $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (IPI), meanwhile, has the potential more than any other existing Iranian project to extend the purview of Iran's "pan-regional" approach, by organically connecting Iran to the sub-continent on a long-term basis and by providing a new Iran-Pakistan-India nexus that could in turn be used for addressing what is lacking so far, that is, more than paltry inter-regional trade.

The 2,600-kilometer IPI pipeline, which was conceived in 1994, envisages transporting Iranian gas to Pakistan and then on to India. Following Ahmadinejad's visit to India this week, Iran reported the three countries were close to signing a "final agreement".

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