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Gas pipeline or else... Iran to India
The US is trying to discourage both Pakistan and India from doing business with Iran.
Iran on Friday upped the ante on a proposed gas pipeline to India via Pakistan, saying New Delhi should agree to the $7 billion project or the two neighbours should be prepared to fork out an extra $25 billion a year on oil imports.
"We think that is a very important project. If India and Pakistan don't implement this project, they will need to buy an extra one million barrels of crude oil daily", Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian told reporters on his arrival in Islamabad.
Crude is currently selling at $71 a barrel.
"Prices of crude oil (are) so high and, in future, nobody can stop rising prices", he said.
The US is trying to discourage both Pakistan and India from doing business with Iran while it remains under suspicion of trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Instead, Washington wants them to put faith in a gas pipeline that is proposed to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea.
Hosseinian said he hoped his discussions with Pakistani officials over the weekend would settle outstanding issues before a ministerial meeting in Tehran in June on the Iran-India pipeline.
Before that, in the third week of May, Pakistan will hold a trilateral meeting with Iran and India, Ahmed Waqar, secretary in Pakistan's oil ministry, said.
