The clerical regime failed in signing gas contract with Turkey that Ahmadinejad was after in Turkey’s trip.
Reutersreported : Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Turkey may not yield the expected oil and gas deals following new demands from the Iranian side, a source from the Turkish prime minister’s office said on Thursday.
Senior Iranian and Turkish officials told Reuters last week that details, including gas pricing, had been worked out on a project for Turkey to produce and export Iranian gas from the South Pars gas field.
The agreement on those details were to have laid the groundwork for the signing of parts of the deal with Ahmadinajad, but new demands from Tehran have slowed down the process.
“A text regarding the agreement over gas with Iran had been set out, but demands made by the Iranians over the past few days are unacceptable,” said a source from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office.
“If Ahmadinejad does not accept the accord on which agreement was reached, the accord will not be signed during this visit,” he said.

The Guardian reported on Aug. 15 – Turkey delivered a humiliating snub to Iran’s visiting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yesterday by backing out of a lucrative energy deal under pressure from the US government, which feared it would enhance Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Signing the £1.87bn agreement to provide Turkey with Iranian natural gas – on which memoranda of understanding had already been agreed – was to have been the crowning achievement of Ahmadinejad’s two-day visit to Istanbul, which Turkish officials had agreed to after intense Iranian lobbying. Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest energy supplier after Russia and has been seeking to woo Turkish investment in its South Pars gas fields.

But as Ahmadinejad met his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, at Ciragan Palace in Istanbul, it emerged that US intervention had effectively torpedoed a deal.

Rather than unveiling the expected landmark agreement, a press conference by the two leaders last night merely yielded a joint statement in which the countries “reiterated their desire for on-going cooperation”.

Turkish officials had earlier cited Iranian pricing and investment conditions as a reason for stalling. However, that appeared to be a smokescreen aimed at disguising Turkish deference to American demands. A western diplomatic source told the Guardian that Turkey had pledged not to sign any major energy deals with Iran in return for Washington’s blessing for Ahmadinejad’s visit after Bush administration officials privately criticised it.

“Steve Hadley (the US national security adviser) voiced objections to Ahmadinejad’s trip when he visited Ankara a month ago,” the source said.

“The attitude was, we’ve allowed them to host [Manouchehr] Mottaki and [Saeed] Jalili (respectively, Iran’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator), but having Ahmadinejad was sending the wrong signal.

“However, the Turks explained that he had been pressing for a visit to Turkey for a while and that they couldn’t say no any longer. To meet American reservations, they promised they wouldn’t sign any major energy deals, apart from maybe something on electricity, and would pressure Ahmadinejad to accept the UN security council incentive package in exchange for suspending uranium enrichment.”

Amid suspicions that Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at building an atomic bomb, the US and the security council’s four other permanent members – Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany – have pressed Tehran to suspend it through a combination of sweeteners and sanctions. Iran refuses and insists the programme is for peaceful purposes.

Cengiz Aktar, professor of EU studies at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir university, said the absence of an energy deal meant Ahmadinejad’s visit had been of little value to Turkey. “Turkey cannot treat Iran as the westerners do.
“It is our neighbour after all. It’s realpolitik – we are obliged to this evil.”