My word, are we showcasing some guts in the Iran-Pakistan pipeline episode! Hina Rabbani Khar’s riposte to Hillary Clinton’s ‘threats’ over the IP project was not only valiant she even made it sound realistic. Last week the US hierarchy – in a class ROFL moment – labeled the IP pipeline as a “bad idea”. And this week they are touting Iran as an “unreliable partner”…the sheer irony is painfully amusing. The US lecturing about the reliability of partners is like Lucas Papademos giving a tutorial on controlling debt crises or Veena Malik giving instructions on wearing hijaabs.
So what is your idea of a reliable partner Mrs Clinton? Someone who doesn’t give a rabbit about your energy shortage? One who can’t stop meddling in your internal affairs and wants you to align yourself dutifully to its policies even if it’s bound to be detrimental for your own self? Or someone who kills innocent soldiers and civilians and then doesn’t bother to do as much as apologise, for courtesy’s sake? Of the intriguing (read comical) verbiage served up by the US Secretary of State one particular statement stood out. “As we are ratcheting up pressure on Iran, it seems somewhat inexplicable that Pakistan would be trying to negotiate a pipeline,” Hillary Clinton said. With Pakistan finding itself in a deep hole as far as the energy predicament is concerned, fulfilling half of its energy needs via gas and running out of channels to quench the need of the aforementioned gas, is it really that ‘inexplicable’ Mrs Clinton that Pakistan would want to negotiate a pipeline with a neighbouring country that it has friendly terms with? Plus, the alternative that you’ve been giving us, the TAPI (Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India) pipeline has taken a nosedive into oblivion, primarily because a certain country has ensured that the A in TAPI borders on a war-torn fragile zone and definitely no way near the periphery of safety.
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