The United States and its allies are endeavoring to muster support - working tirelessly for a new, tough sanctions regimen so as to make Iran kneel before them, to give in to their wishes and demands.

Some 14 years ago, Washington enacted a law sanctioning against companies that make large investments in Iranian energy infrastructure and at the same time operate in the US, liable to punitive actions. However, for fear of angering America's allies, it was never truly enforced.

That covenant is now up for change. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just apprised the US Senate of the names of 41 companies that have flouted the US law by providing expertise, equipment and financing to Iran, the and have also carried out construction work on oil and gas pipelines. Over the past five years, these 41 companies have helped Iran develop its oil and gas sector, accounting for more than half of the Iranian government's revenues, US Congressional investigators reported.

No American companies were listed in the report, but the China National Petroleum Corporation was named for financing an Iranian oil field as per an agreement with the Iranian government, estimated to be worth more than $2 billion. Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering of South Korea was also reported to be building tanker ships for Iran under a $384 million contact.

Interestingly, five Indian companies were also reported violating the US regimen - despite the fact that at the IAEA, apparently buckling under the US pressure, New Delhi had voted against Tehran. And again under the seemingly immense US pressure, India is also playing cold to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.

Indeed US senators seem upset at the report. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat from New York who has been pushing hard for hearings on companies that do business in Iran underlined, "Companies whose profits fuel Iran's nuclear ambitions should not be allowed to do business with the US or benefit from the US economy."

In the meantime, the United States and its European allies are also endeavoring to tighten screws on Tehran further, by securing support for a still tougher new sanctions regimen against Iran. The Obama administration is lobbying hard at the UN Security Council for tougher punishments. Arch-enemy Israel is also pushing for a broad agreement to block Iran's gasoline imports. Due to lack of investment in the refining sector, Iran today needs to import some 40 percent of its gasoline needs, despite being the world's fifth biggest exporter of crude. And this is having an extremely adverse impact on the day-to-day life of the common man in Iran.

Tehran continues to defy, underplaying the impact of these sanctions and underlining these have had no impact on Iran's ability to export oil. The risk that future measures might hit Iran's gasoline imports is a joke, Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi said last Thursday on the sidelines of an energy conference. "We have (also) no limitations to export our oil," Mirkazemi told reporters.

"Despite all limitations imposed on Iran's oil and gas industry, we have been able to improve. Imposing sanctions has not isolated Iran but helped the country to improve its oil industry," he told the conference.

Echoing defiance, the Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said the world needed Iranian energy. "Most countries of the world are concerned about their future energy needs, and they have no alternative but to negotiate with Iran," Rahimi told the conference.

And Iran has been flexing and showing off its muscle too. Last week, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard held war games in the strategic Hormuz Strait. Iran has been holding maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz annually since 2006 to show off its military capabilities. Iran's leaders have said in the past that if attacked, the country would respond by shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Gulf, through which around 40 percent of the world's oil and gas supplies pass.

The three-day war games this year brought in naval, air and ground units from the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian state television reported. On Thursday, the military unveiled a new attack speedboat, describing it as an "ultra-speed and smart" vessel called "Ya Mahdi." Before the commencement of the war games, Iran had said 313 smaller speedboats with the capability of firing rockets and missiles were to participate in the exercises.

The Iranian state television later also showed video footage of a Ya Mahdi vessel, firing rockets at a still target in the sea, while dozens of the small speedboats launched rocket-propelled grenades at an abandoned ship and troops boarded it in a simulated attack on an enemy warship.

The energy world can not remain oblivious to these developments. Despite agreeing to the Western concerns that a nuclear Iran is not in the interest of the regional and global peace, China doesn't seem very enthusiastic about any new, harsher sanctions regimen. There are indeed reasons for this Chinese ambivalence. It needs Iranian oil. And the fact remains the world too needs Iranian oil. India and Pakistan too, need the next door Iranian gas. And the connivance of the major Indian energy companies, despite the immense US pressure, also needs to be seen in this very perspective.

It is a complex world. Let it be emphasized, and indeed reemphasized, that the global energy sector should not and could not be sacrificed at the altar of geopolitics. Consequences could be disastrous - for all!