Maximizing on the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to India

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to be in New Delhi on 29th April for a working visit. Energy issues are on the agenda of talks between India and Iran during the short six-hour visit. The visit has a wider geo-political significance and hopefully the Government of India will avoid diplomatic sluggishness and maximize on the opportunity.

The timing of the visit is crucial. The Bush administration has focused attention on isolating the regime of President Ahmadinejad. In March 2008, the third round of Security Council sanctions was imposed on Iran. Despite the findings published in the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007, the U.S. continues to view Iran as a major threat and seeks to increase international pressure on Iran to suspend Uranium enrichment. Given the cordiality of Indo-U.S. relations, the visit of President Ahmadinejad can emerge as an unnecessary irritant in bilateral relations. On the other hand, the U.S. has recently lost much international support for branding Iran as a rogue state. President Ahmadinejad has visited the Arab states and even addressed the Gulf Cooperation Council. India will thus need to diplomatically balance the growing regional popularity of President Ahmadinejad and the U.S. abhorrence for the Iranian regime.

The visit of President Ahmadinejad was not a planned one. The Indian Government had received request for re-fuelling the Iranian President’s plane in India on a flight from Sri Lanka to Tehran. The technical stop-over was tactically turned into an official visit by India. This was an intelligent gesture for correcting the seemingly negative perceptions of the Indian government towards Iran. India has further demonstrated diplomatic deftness by refusing to be unduly pressurized by the U.S. The U.S. has advised India to use the upcoming visit of President Ahmadinejad as an opportunity to insist Iran for complying with the Security Council resolutions and give-up Uranium enrichment. The Government of India in response has refused to be guided by any third party in defining its bilateral relations with Iran. Moreover, India has asserted the legality of the IAEA, rather than the U.S., in judging Iran’s non-compliance to the non-proliferation commitments.

The U.S. has attempted in the past to dictate India’s Iran policy. In January 2006 U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford, stated that the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal could be stalled in the U.S. Congress if India did not vote against Iran at the IAEA. After the visit of Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister to Delhi in September 2007, Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary for State, expressed concerns over India’s military relationship with Iran. On both the occasions India had countered the U.S. pressures through verbal statements. The visit of President Ahmadinejad provides an opportunity to go beyond rhetoric and make substantial improvements in the relations with Iran.

India appears to be involved in a damage control exercise following its vote against Iran in the IAEA in September 2005. The Indian government realizes that Iran is in a position to fulfill India’s energy requirements in the next decade. The proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is expected to provide crucial energy supplies for India. Apart from being traditional friends Iran has supported India on the Kashmir issues in the OIC. The huge Shia Muslim population in India shares a natural bondage with the Iranian Shiites. Iran and India have agreed to join hands in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and to support the development of alternate access routes to that country via Iran’s Chahbahar. Hence India’s relations with Iran do not represent mere traditional symbolism, but have immense diplomatic advantage for the future. The Iran policy needs to go beyond publicizing India’s non-alignment to concretizing the national foreign policy objectives.

The tests of India’s diplomatic capabilities lie in consolidating relations with Iran, without unduly antagonizing the U.S. India has traditionally encountered the problem of balancing relations with other countries. India tends to displease and appease other countries at regular intervals. The clue for India lies in being unapologetic about pursuing her national interests by building bilateral, regional and global partnerships. For realizing these goals it is essential that India remains committed, in letter and spirit, to the agreements concluded with the U.S. and Iran. The 2004 New Delhi Declaration on strategic partnership with Iran needs to be treated as important as the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Civilian Agreement of 2005. For ensuring the stability of Afghanistan, India needs to cooperate with the U.S. and Iran.

According to Morgenthau’s Realism, nation states are not judged by the universal moral principles; the success of a nation-state is dependent on its ability to define national interest in terms of power. Hopefully Indian diplomacy realizes that interactions with the Iranian President should be guided by the goals of serving India’s national interest rather than for appeasing either Iran or the U.S.

[The article was published at http://www.ipcs.org/whatsNewArticle1.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2569&status=article&mod=b]