Iran and Afghanistan Break US Sanction Stranglehold.

The bizarre nature of global politics being played out in the oil and gas rich region of Central Asia was confirmed as news is coming out of the Iranian-Afghan oil deal. The Express Tribune reports,

“Iran has exported gasoil to Afghanistan over the past years but the export of gasoline and jet fuel will begin next year,” Irna quoted Ali Reza Zeighami, managing director of the National Iranian Refining and Oil Products Distribution Company, as saying.

Zeighami said the price of the products will be determined based on International prices.

In April, trade sources said Iran had struck a deal to sell gasoline to Iraq but that the rare cargo did not mean the Islamic Republic had became a net exporter and free from its dependence on gasoline imports.

Shipping data obtained by Reuters in November showed Iran’s October gasoline imports rose more than 21 percent to 63,279 barrels per day from 51,986 bpd in September.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday his country would become a major gasoline exporter by 2013, despite the West’s toughest-ever sanctions on the Islamic state.

The sanctions have targeted a vulnerability caused by Iran’s lack of refining capacity, and many foreign companies have been forced to withdraw from Iran’s energy sector.

The United States, Britain and Canada announced new measures against Iran’s energy and financial sectors last month and the European Union is considering a ban, already in place in the United States, on imports of Iranian oil.

NATO has spend a decade in Afghanistan trying to create a client state. It has invested in trying to stabilise the country so as to get the TAPI Pipeline constructed, integrate it into the regional economies to the north and south and exclude Iran by blocking the rival IPI project, one that Pakistan has had to be steered away from by US pressure.

Then Iran simply strikes an oil deal with Afghanistan. Whichever way it is looked at, the NATO occupation of Afghanistan cannot yield the results it wants to impose. The attempt to enforce a NATO settlement on Afghanistan without the regional players condemns it to pumping Western money into this land without sure economic benefits and increases regional tensions.