“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched the project with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari at a ceremony on the border, hailing a blow to US-led sanctions targeting his country’s oil and gas sector. The two leaders unveiled a plaque before shaking hands and offering prayers for the successful conclusion of the project, which involves the laying of a 485 mile section of the pipeline on the Pakistani side, expected to cost some $1.5 billion. “The completion of the pipeline is in the interests of peace, security and progress of the two countries … It will also consolidate the economic, political and security ties of the two nations,” they said in a joint statement……………….”

This agreement on the gas pipeline was one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest foreign policy failures. She and her State Department worked hard to derail it. It did not threaten the security of the United States; it did not even threaten the more important security of Israel. Yet she tried all kinds of extremely expensive alternatives that would bypass Iranian gas fields. Every alternative was very uneconomical: Iran probably sits on the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas (possibly the largest). No doubt the Iranians also paid a price for the pleasure of thumbing their noses at the West.
Controversial? Only in the United States media since it is not against any United Nations sanctions.

Cheers
mhg