(CNSNews.com) - Iran edged closer Tuesday to realizing its plans for a pipeline to carry Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and India, a project that would help Tehran's effort to break free from isolation. The plan is strongly opposed by the United States.

After talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a brief visit to New Delhi, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said details of the pipeline deal would be finalized within 45 days and then be put before the leaders of the three countries.

Earlier in the week, Ahmadinejad met with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, where the multi-billion dollar pipeline project also was discussed. The two sides said a number of issues had been resolved, and the pipeline project could be completed as soon as 2012.

Iran is home to the world's second-largest gas reserves, after Russia, and the government has not hidden its goal of using the resource for economic as well as political ends.

"This is a very important, very immense project, not only the pipeline but the very issues involved in this program have social, economic and political ramifications for both our countries," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in Delhi.

Energy-hungry India is hunting for new sources of oil and gas to drive its fast-growing economy, and it has bristled at Washington's attempts to dissuade it from cooperating with the Iranians while the international dispute over its nuclear activities remains unresolved.

At the same time, Singh's government is trying to push ahead with a civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the U.S. The historic agreement, which will allow the U.S. to sell nuclear fuel to India, requires parliamentary approval in both countries.

Some members of the U.S. Congress want India to extend its cooperation with regard to Iran if it wants to see the deal okayed; in India, leftwing lawmakers allied to the governing coalition oppose the deal precisely because they suspect the U.S. is trying to force India to fall in line with its foreign policy objectives.

(Amid ongoing coalition wrangling in India over the deal, its future looks uncertain, although White House press secretary Dana Perino said Monday the U.S. would not declare it "dead" as it viewed the agreement as "critically important.")

The State Department this week reiterated its opposition to the pipeline plan.

"Given where Iran is in the international system, being under sanctions, and given its actions within the international system, is now really the time to conclude a pipeline deal with the Iranian government?" spokesman Sean McCormack asked during a press briefing.

During Ahmadinejad's visit, Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon questioned the effectiveness of isolating Iran.

"From our point of view, the more engagement is at work, the more Iran becomes a factor of stability in the region," he told reporters.

The 1,600-mile Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project has been under discussion since the 1990s, but ran into difficulties over issues including pricing, assurance of supply and transit fees Pakistan wants to charge for India-bound gas crossing its territory.

Analysts say efforts to bridge the differences have been boosted by concerns over rising oil prices as well as steady improvements in relations between traditional foes India and Pakistan.

During Ahmadinejad's visits to Islamabad and Delhi, both host governments said they expressed support for Iran's right to "peaceful" nuclear energy programs. Menon said India had also asked Iran to cooperate with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Tehran has refused to comply with U.N. Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment. It insists the program's goal is purely to supply electricity, and denies claims by the U.S. and its European allies that it has military ambitions.

In 2005 and 2006, India upset Iran -- and was praised by the U.S. -- when it backed the West against Iran in votes at the IAEA, including a key resolution to refer the Iranian nuclear dossier to the Security Council. Singh's left-wing allies in parliament were furious, and Iranian officials warned that those who sided against their country would "suffer" economically.

Ahead of Ahmadinejad's visit, Delhi last week rejected calls by the U.S. to raise with the visitor the need for Iran to comply with Security Council requirements. India and Iran did not need outside advice on how to conduct bilateral relations, the foreign ministry declared.

According to Madhavi Bhasin, a research scholar at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India appears to be trying to counter the damage that its voting stance at the IAEA caused to its relations with Iran.

"India has traditionally faced the problem of balancing its relations with other countries by displeasing some and appeasing other countries at regular intervals," Bhasin said in an Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies analysis.

Not only does Iran potentially hold the key to India's energy needs in the years ahead, but the two countries share other interests, not least of all the fact that India's large Shi'ite population is the world's second largest, after Iran's.

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