Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2002, page 17

Special Report

 

Kazakhstan Supports Iran Pipeline Route: Is Israel’s Turkish Route Doomed?

 

By Andrew I. Killgore

On Dec. 9 in Kazakhstan’s new capital of Astara, President Nursultan Nazarbayev told visiting Secretary of State Colin Powell that Kazakhstan favored a pipeline through Iran to carry oil from the Caspian area to a salt-water port. Secretary Powell cautiously restated the U.S. position favoring Turkey and Russia as export routes, but he did not rule out Nazarbayev’s suggestion.

The foregoing was carried in a lengthy if incomplete Dec. 10 New York Times article. Considered unfit to print was the eight-year political juggernaut campaign by Israel and AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) pushing for a pipeline route through Turkey despite the opposition of American and international oil companies operating in the Caspian region.

Nazarbayev was expected to call on the White House in late December. If he is as explicit with President George W. Bush as he was with Secretary Powell, it may well mean that the Israeli-favored Baku (Azerbaijan)-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline can never be built. Not the most economically viable route in the best of cases, without large quantities of Azerbaijani petroleum that would have to be transported by an undersea (Caspian) pipeline from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, even the most ardent defender of Israeli interests would have to abandon the Baku-Ceyhan scenario.

When push comes to shove, Israel and AIPAC rarely lose in Washington. True to form, no stone has been left unturned in the campaign to build Baku-Ceyhan—and thus prove to Turkey that its alliance with Israel pays off in Washington. Beginning in 1993, AIPAC set out to persuade President Bill Clinton that Iran was threatening Western interests in the Middle East. Israel and AIPAC’s real complaint was that Iran was supporting Hezbollah’s fight against Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon.

In 1995 Clinton, by executive order, placed restrictions on some Iranian products. Later that year, Congress passed the AIPAC-authored Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) imposing sanctions on any company—American or not—spending as much as $20 million developing Iran’s oil or gas reserves.

French, Russian, and Malaysian companies defied ILSA by contracting for billions to explore Iran’s huge South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. President Clinton successfully resisted Israel/AIPAC demands that the sanctions be imposed because he realized that such action would land the United States in a losing battle with the World Trade Organization.

In his first months in office President Bush supported just a two-year extension of ILSA. Israel/AIPAC pulled a fast move in Congress, however, and got a five-year extension. Despite the extension, Bush will not impose any sanctions on Russia, France and Malaysia.

The recently expanded Russian Tengiz-Novorossiysk (on Russia’s Black Sea coast) pipeline will be able to handle the oil produced in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz field. But there may be an even bigger offshore field in the Caspian Sea, Kashagan. Phillips Petroleum, which has an interest in Kashagan, told the Washington Report that Kashagan may be very big indeed.

Kashagan’s oil will require a new pipeline. If it ends up going through Iran to the Persian Gulf, Israel/AIPAC will have lost what was perhaps its hardest fought battle—and the oil companies will have won a shorter and cheaper export route to American homes and gas stations.

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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