Perhaps it was the atmosphere of incipient chumminess between United States President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hasan Rouhani spreading throughout the United Nations in New York last week. At any rate, Pakistan's new prime minister Nawaz Sharif felt emboldened to assert that his government will proceed with plans for a pipeline bringing natural gas from Iran's South Pars field, the world's largest.
For years successive Pakistan governments have been under pressure from Washington not to go ahead with the project, which U.S. administrations saw as breaking sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.
