New gas field in Iran - benefit or excuse for war?

New gas field in Iran - benefit or excuse for war?

Most likely, Iran will try to play a new “gas game”, which she has been playing for long, but not always successfully.

The situation in Iran takes a new turn. According to media reports, Iran has discovered in the Caspian Sea a natural gas field with the volume of 1.42 trillion cubic meters, lying in waters 700 meters deep. According to Minister of Petroleum Rostam Ghasemi, the field wholly lies within Iranian maritime boundaries and may 5 times exceed the volume of hitherto known gas reserves in the Iranian part of the Caspian Sea.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran holds the world’s second-largest gas reserves: it accounts for 16% of the world reserves. Russia has the biggest reserves of the fuel. The widely advertised field “Shah Deniz” in Azerbaijan holds the 54th place in the list of countries that produce gas, which, however, does not prevent Ilham Aliyev from blackmailing and cashing in on Europe. Most likely, Iran will try to play a new “gas game”, which she has been playing for long, but not always successfully. Sanctions occasionally imposed on Iran by the U.S. and the EU are not always effective or implemented to the end. A good example of this is the time-barred “Iran-Contra” affair. Let us recall that in 1986 some members of the U.S. administration organized secret arms shipments to Iran, thereby violating the arms embargo against the country. Further investigation revealed that money from the sale of arms went to finance the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, bypassing the ban of the Congress on their funding.

Moreover, Michael Ledeen, a consultant of the U.S. National Security Council, drew Israel into the operation, serving as an intermediary for supplying antitank missiles BGM-71 TOW and spare parts for anti-aircraft missiles MIM-23 Hawk. The first consignment of missiles was transported to Iran in August-September 1985. In exchange, one American hostage was released and Iran’s Jews were given permission to leave the country.

The operation was made public after October 5, 1986, when the military transport aircraft C-123K carrying military load to “contras” was shot down over Nicaragua. The surviving pilot, Eugene Hasenfus, American, was arrested by government forces, testifying that he worked for the CIA. Shortly thereafter, one of the Lebanese newspapers made public the story of arms sale to Iran. But it was long ago, and as claimed by the representatives of the White House, the operation was carried out in the national interest. Possibly. The interests of the U.S. gas-oil lobby, like those of the military-industrial complex are what Americans call “national interest”, because as the U.S. says: “What's good for General Motors is good for America.”

If the information on the gas field is proved, Iran, or rather the “new coalition for democracy in the East”, shall have 2 choices: either to get Tehran, through negotiations and promises, to abandon its nuclear program in return for transporting gas to Western Europe, i.e. the Nabucco project, or to launch the Libyan version. But in both cases, the West gets the short straw, and that’s why, in principle, Tehran can agree on the gas pipeline, but impose her own terms, such as the route, prices and profits. In conditions of the economic crisis, when fuel prices will continue rising, Europe had better have a second gas pipeline from Iran bypassing Russia, rather than an unpredictable and almost unrealizable plan with Azerbaijan. The more so that gas from “Shah-Deniz” is simply not enough. As for the Libyan option, it is fraught with too heavy consequences for the whole world. The region is somehow “accustomed” to countless minor wars, and a new war cannot surprise it. But things are different with Iran: it is not Libya, with its tribal sectarian strives, but it is an almost monolithic country that has not yet forgotten its imperial ambitions. It is almost impossible to fight such countries; you can blow them up only from the inside. One such attempt was made - the opposition tried to take power after the presidential election, but it failed. One may endlessly speak of democracy and get money for it, but in a Muslim country ordinary people listen to their Ayatollah. People do not care about a freedom they don’t need, because they don’t know what to do with it. But even the opposition in 2009 said it would continue the nuclear program, and in no way opposed theocrats.

However, it must be said that the United States, with all its ignorance of the realities of the East and Islam, will yet fill able to come to a good agreement with Iran. The failed “Arab spring” must have taught the White House that not every opposition is an “American democracy” and not every head of state is a dictator. Arab countries simply cannot survive without a totalitarian system, whether the U.S. likes it or not. And Iran is not very different from them.

Karine Ter-Sahakyan
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