State Department accused of shilling for Iran

Is the U.S. State Department really backing plans that would make Iran Europe's next major source of natural gas?

According to John Rosenthal in World Politics Review, the answer, surprisingly, is yes.

Starting last month, the State Department began to openly and enthusiastically back plans for the Nabucco pipeline, a largely European-owned line that will bring gas through Turkey into Europe. The pipeline is designed to provide an alternative to Russia's Gazprom monopoly. Rosenthal takes a closer look at what the plan means:

The problem with all this enthusiasm, however, is that if Nabucco does indeed "make sense," the virtually universally held and more or less openly expressed opinion of the key European decision-makers is that it precisely does not make sense without the inclusion of Iranian gas supplies."

And he could be right. The Nabucco pipeline, as originally planned, would draw on Azeri gas from the Shah Deniz fields in the Caspian Sea. But due to market changes, those fields will only last long enough to serve as little more than a start-up source. After that, Nabucco will have to find a second, larger source of gas. And the potential candidates for that long-term, profitable deal? Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Iran.

Turkmenistan, beside being ruled by crazies, comes with its own set of problems. Nabucco would have to construct a new undersea pipeline in order to reach this gas-rich state, and Turkmenistan could simply decide to stick to its current pipeline through Russia -– not a bad deal now that Russia has agreed to pay market price. Then there's Iraq, but that's only a realistic alternative once the whole war thing settles down.

Which leaves us with Iran, holder of the world's second-largest gas reserves, as the most viable option. Somewhere, Ayatollah Khamenei is laughing.