The Iran nuclear issue is moving onto a new phase. Talks have resumed after a break of some two years during which the West tried out coercive diplomacy, including military threats, but failed to stop Iran’s nuclear programme. Both sides are in a chastened mood after peering into the abyss and not liking what they saw. As for the West, the realisation has finally dawned that Iran will not surrender its right to pursue a nuclear programme, while Iran senses that over and above its solemn assurances, it needs to do something extra to convince the West of the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. Essentially, it becomes a matter of mutual trust.
This may sound simple but the journey ahead is difficult not only because it is an untrodden path in the saga of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but extraneous ‘non-nuclear’ factors also come into play such as Iran’s rise as a regional power and its integration in the international community, the winds of change sweeping across West Asia, oil, political Islam, Arab-Israeli problem and the Palestine question and, of course, Israel’s security.
Movement
What complicates all this is the bitter harvest of the United States-Iran standoff through three decades and more and the whirlpool of passions it generated, which refuse to die down and readily play into the highly polarised domestic politics in both countries.
The big difference today is that both in Washington and in Tehran, there is willingness to make a serious bid to resolve the problem. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has put his political and moral authority to affirm the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme.
nd US President Barack Obama has opted to explore the path of negotiations based on a ‘step-bystep’ approach. Indeed, the underlying assumption is that as the perilous journey gets under way, a critical mass of mutual trust would begin to accrue imparting a dynamics to the entire process. There is no surety whether the assumption is right and could be insulated from the predatory strikes of extremists (on both sides), but the international community at least is convinced that this is the road best taken.
Clearly, a backdrop of great volatility and danger frames India’s Iran policy in the period ahead. India is a stakeholder in the outcome of the process that formally commenced last Saturday when diplomats from the so-called ‘P5+ 1′ and Iran sat down by the side of the Bosphorous and clocked some 10 hours of conversation and parted with an understanding as to what to talk about when they met again in Baghdad on May 23. Yet India’s ability to influence the ‘outcome’ is virtually zero. The task of diplomacy becomes infinitely tough when it drifts with the tides while securing long- term interests. But there is no point ruing today the policy lapse of the 2005-2006 period, and the huge erosion of India-Iran strategic understanding it caused.
What matters most as of now is that India is genuinely undertaking a course correction. The robust efforts to circumvent the roadblock that Washington created over the payment mechanism for India’s trade and economic transactions with Iran; India’s manifest keenness to foster trade and expand its scope even in the current trying circumstances of US sanctions; its political willingness to remain engaged with Iran; India’s adherence to a principled stance on the nuclear issue; and the overall desire to sequester the relationship with Iran from interference from third parties – all these are to be taken note of.
India
The fact that India has vaulted to overtake China to assume the number one spot as Iran’s oil customer in the first quarter of this year – and indeed exceeding its own performance in the corresponding period last year by a whopping 23 percent – underscores the imperatives of the relationship for India’s long-term energy security.
likely visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Iran will be entirely in consonance with this new thinking.
The interference of third parties in the Indian-Iranian discourse is nothing new, but the real challenge today lies somewhere else. India needs to factor in that in a conceivable future, the US-Iran standoff may begin to wither away and the two protagonists may resume dealings.
Energy
Suffice to say, if modern history has been about the control of oil and if the raison d’etre of the Cold War was nothing else, and if the affluent western economies and rising China cannot do without oil imports, Iran’s entry into the global market as a player without handicaps would be a game changer in world politics and international security. Iran is the last frontier in the geopolitics of energy.
The countdown may soon begin in the race for Iran’s fabulous energy reserves, and an early start can make all the difference. To be sure, a surge in British diplomacy is already visible in the recent weeks.
n sum, the turbulence in the situation around Iran should not be mistaken for an atavistic theatre piece of Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian differences in a competitive contemporary setting. Never forget that Arabs have cohabited with the Persians through one millennium and more. For India, there is no real choice to make between Iran and the GCC states. India needs both, and our diplomacy has its task cut out. Listen to the footfalls of the West and China in the Persian Gulf.
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