Residents of Iran’s north must surely have experienced chagrin at a visceral level in December 2007 when they froze after Turkmenistan halted natural gas exports to the country. Surely the irony was not lost that, even though Iran sits atop the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia’s, it is beholden to Turkmenistan for imports supplying as much as 5% of its gas needs.Turkmenistan cited pipeline issues as the cause of the gas curtailment, but most insiders believed that Turkmen authorities, who wanted price increases, were upset at payment delays and at Iran’s refusal to submit to the dynamics of the new pricing realities. Iran had paid Turkmenistan $75-1...