Pipeline Deal Is Sweet Music for Iran

How a trans-Caspian gas pipeline project came to be named after the 19th-century Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi's famous opera Nabucco remains obscure. The opera is based on a Biblical story about the tragic plight of persecuted Jews exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Maybe, the opera's enchanting story of love and struggle or its tendency toward melodrama was considered an apt metaphor for the acute Caspian energy rivalry.

Moscow often poured scorn on the Nabucco project's dim prospects by drawing apt allusions from Verdi's opera. In the latest parody, an expert commentator in Moscow ridiculed that the "chaotic chanting" by Europeans in support of the project reminded him of the haunting chorus of Hebrew slaves