Amid Houthi crisis, Jaishankar in Iran for bilateral talks

“External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Tehran during January 14-15 as part of the ongoing high-level exchanges between the two sides,” the Ministry of External Affairs stated on Saturday.

A day earlier, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had dialled Jaishankar to discuss the Iran-backed Houthi attacks. The US-led coalition forces launched strikes against sites linked to the Houthi movement in Yemen, the first in the country since the Iran-backed group started targeting international shipping in the Red Sea late last year.

The Houthis are attacking cargo in the Red Sea to purportedly declare their support for Hamas in the Israel conflict. A prolonged Houthi rebel crisis in the Red Sea also has the potential to hurt India’s foreign trade.

The MEA said that during his visit, Jaishankar will meet his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to discuss “bilateral, regional and global issues”. This is the first ministerial visit from India to Iran ever since the beginning of the Gaza conflict on October 7 last year. Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra had visited Tehran on November 26 to participate in the Foreign Office Consultation (FOC).

In November last year, a month after the Israel-Hamas conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had dialled Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi to discuss the “difficult situation” in West Asia.

According to the MEA statement, during Jaishankar’s visit, “political cooperation, connectivity initiatives and strong people-to-people ties will constitute important aspects of the agenda”. India has been developing the Chabahar port of Iran, which could be adversely impacted in case the war escalates further.

‘China shouldn’t expect other ties to move normally’

Nagpur: Amid a stand-off at the border, China should not expect other relations to move on normally, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday.

Diplomacy continues and sometimes solutions to difficult situations do not come in haste, he said while speaking on ‘Bharat’s Rise in Geopolitics’ at an event in Nagpur.

He said the borders between India and China are not mutually agreed and it was decided that both sides would not amass troops and would keep the other informed about their movements, but the neighbouring nation violated this agreement in 2020. It brought its troops in large numbers to the LAC and the Galwan incident happened, Jaishankar said.

The EAM said he had explained to his Chinese counterpart that “unless a solution is found at the border, they should not expect other relations to move on normally”.

“That is impossible. You don’t want to fight and do trade at the same time. Meanwhile, diplomacy is going on and sometimes solutions to difficult situations do not come in haste,” he asserted. PTI