Turkey Pulls Out of Deal to Buy Iranian Gas Under Pressure From US

Iranian president's two-day lobbying visit ends in disappointment as Istanbul rejects 1.87bn deal Turkey delivered a humiliating snub to Iran's visiting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yesterday by backing out of a lucrative energy deal under pressure from the US government, which feared it would enhance Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Signing the £1.87bn agreement to provide Turkey with Iranian natural gas - on which memoranda of understanding had already been agreed - was to have been the crowning achievement of Ahmadinejad's two-day visit to Istanbul, which Turkish officials had agreed to after intense Iranian lobbying. Iran is Turkey's second-biggest energy supplier after Russia and has been seeking to woo Turkish investment in its South Pars gas fields.

But as Ahmadinejad met his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, at Ciragan Palace in Istanbul, it emerged that US intervention had effectively torpedoed a deal.

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Turkish newspaper reveals Maliki’s wait-game

Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyat [via alriyadh] revealed why Maliki is playing a time game and why the Kurds want to sign the agreement as soon as possible:

Iraqi government asked both Turkey and Iran to provide written guarantees on security cooperation with Iraq, in exchange for abandoning the security agreement the U.S.

The newspaper uncovered, that Baghdad is waiting for answers from Tehran and Ankara, and will cancel the whole idea of the agreement in case Iran and Turkey provide such guarantees.

Uruknet

This actually means that US military presence would no longer be necessary. If it ever was. It also means that a US/Israeli attack on Iran would become virtually impossible, without upsetting Nato-partner Turkey, and without sparking a major new wave of violence and political instability in Iraq.

Let's just hope no 'incident' will happen in the near future, to prevent this deal from happening.