Iran steps into enemy's territory

This week, with his three-nation tour of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad will fortify Iran's regional ties and thus achieve a milestone in his administration's "Look East" foreign policy orientation. Accompanied by a high-ranking delegation, Ahmadinejad's trip transpires at a time of heightened US allegations of Iran's meddling in Iraq and serves as an antidote to the US policy of isolating Iran and castigating it as a rogue or pariah state. Too bad for the US, which now places the lion's share of the blame for its quagmire in Iraq on Iran's "destructive influence", two key US allies in the sub-continent, India and Pakistan, are now poised to deepen their economic, political, cultural and even geostrategic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, irrespective of Tehran's defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a halt in Iran's uranium-enrichment activities. Not only that, Sri Lanka, strategically situated in the Indian Ocean, is also about to enter into a close economic relationship with Iran, in light of Tehran's funding of the US$450 million multi-purpose Uma Oya power project and its billion-dollar investment in Sri Lanka's sole oil refinery [1]. This is bound to enhance Iran's regional clout as well as create new points of geostrategic synergy between Tehran and New Delhi. Iran steps into enemy's territory By Kaveh L Afrasiabi