THE nuclear-related sanctions against Iran may be gone, but the ambiguities remain. For many years now, American officials have been clear in their response to questions about the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project: it violates US sanctions, they would always say.

When Pakistani officials raised the possibility of exempting the pipeline project from US nuclear-related sanctions back in 2013 on the sidelines of the strategic dialogue, they were told quite clearly that no exemptions could be granted.

Also read: Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline to be completed by 2017

Last year, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reportedly raised the issue with Secretary of State John Kerry on the latter’s visit to Pakistan, no response was received. But as of Jan 16, when the nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were formally lifted, the responses have become ambiguous.

Most recently, an assistant secretary from the US Department of Energy was asked about the pipeline project during his visit to Pakistan, and his only response was that the matter “is still to be judged”.

One could read any number of meanings into this odd choice of words, but its ambiguity and non-committal nature stands in stark contrast to all earlier pronouncements by American officialdom on the matter.

This ambiguity on the project may be new to American language, but Pakistan’s continued shilly-shallying even after the lifting of sanctions paints a confusing picture.

Most recently, the petroleum minister did the project, and Pakistan’s standing in the eyes of its newly resurgent neighbour, no favours when he flatly stated that the pipeline project could “not be completed due to international sanctions on Iran”.

What made this otherwise bland statement remarkable was that it was given only a few weeks before the sanctions were formally lifted.

The words did not go down well in Iran, where official media said that the minister had “put the kibosh on expectations that a pipeline intended to take Iranian gas to the country could ever be completed”.

The same article noted the ambiguous and even “contradictory” statements from senior officials in Pakistan and failure to take gas deliveries from the end of 2014 or even build its section of the pipeline.

It would have been better if the creeping ambiguity in American language was met by growing clarity in Pakistan’s stance, that the time had come to push this project, and all excuses to not commence gas deliveries now stood exhausted. It is indeed time to judge this project favourably and get moving on it.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2016