Ignoring serious political discord at home, the Indian government on 4 February chose to vote along with the United States in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), referring the Iranian nuclear research programme to the UN Security Council. Two weeks later, policymakers in New Delhi had no definite information on the status of an ambitious deal concluded early in 2005 for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran. Media reports had appeared of an Iranian intent to negotiate the deal afresh, but the Indian government had not received any official indication to this effect, said a senior official at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The minister who had concluded the deal for India, meanwhile, found himself rather abruptly supplanted. Since the Congress-led government assumed office in May 2004, Mani Shankar Aiyar had devoted himself for the most part to his assignment as Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, which was merely a temporary charge. On 29 January, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after months of barely-concealed discomfort with Aiyar's visionary enthusiasm, replaced him with Murli Deora, a Bombay politician known for his pro-US inclinations. It was termed a "routine reshuffle" of the union cabinet, but it left Aiyar with a badly shrunken profile, as minister for local self-government and youth affairs.
Most analysts believe that the IAEA vote and the ministry reshuffle have dealt a double blow to the energy security strategy that Aiyar had mapped out with great foresight during his tenure in the Ministry. The LNG import deal was the first major breakthrough achieved under his stewardship. Yet even this mammoth 25-year deal was dwarfed in every respect by the other project that Aiyar lent his considerable authority and enthusiasm to. It was an enterprise that many thought could "redirect the history of Southasia" – a gas pipeline that would bring the abundant energy resources of the world's largest natural gas fields just offshore of Iran, to the energy-hungry towns and villages of India (See Himal cover story, Jul-Aug 2005). The necessity of securing transit through Pakistan for vital energy supplies to India, it was thought, would act as a great confidence-building measure between the two antagonistic Southasian countries.
Slow burial
Manmohan Singh's first public display of disquiet came in Washington DC on 18 July 2005, shortly after he had clinched a deal – that remains contentious to this day – on civilian nuclear cooperation with the US. Asked specifically about the pipeline from Iran, he admitted rather casually that it might prove an impossible dream. Since finance for the project could well be impossible to organise, he indicated, he was not inclined to invest too much hope in the gas pipeline from Iran.