energy

It can be easy to forget that the hot air spewed in America has real consequences elsewhere. While Obama and Clinton wrestle over lapel pins, policy-makers in New Delhi and Tehran are calculating the future of their bilateral relations in large part on the outcome of the US elections. Indian and Iranian efforts to build a joint 2,775 km gas pipeline (through Pakistan), which would bring much-needed energy to India, remain in the doldrums, with the Bush administration running interference. So, too, has the White House driven a fissure between Iran and India on nuclear energy; the US-Indo nuclear deal not only soured India's domestic politics - with the government's Left allies making a fuss - but broke New Delhi's age-old solidarity with developing countries in last year's IAEA Board of Governors' vote on Iran's nuclear program.

Edward Lucas made the interesting point on BBC Radio Four’s Start the Week this morning, that almost unnoticed amid the weekend’s press coverage of Russia’s disputes with the British Council and Royal Academy, President Putin went to Bulgaria to sign a gas pipeline deal that closes a circle as elegantly, in its way, as Matisse’s La Danse.