Tags:
Journalism of Courage
While the CPM can afford to reduce foreign policy to a set of slogans, no responsible government in Delhi can waver in the defence of national interest in challenging circumstances like the one presented by Iran8217;s nuclear proliferation. As The Sunday Express reported, India8217;s relationship with Iran is a mix of positive and negative. It is not non-aligned solidarity but hard-nosed calculus on energy security and transit to Afghanistan, as well as the shared threat of the Taliban , which brought both countries together. However, Iran8217;s attitude to the Kashmir question at the OIC and India8217;s permanent membership of the UNSC have always been disconcerting to New Delhi.
On the all important nuclear issue, which is what is at stake in the current debate at the IAEA8212; Indo-Iranian differences are unbridgeable. Iran has pressed in various international forums for the universal membership of the NPT8212; in other words, asking India to give up its nuclear weapons and join the NPT as a non-nuclear state. India8217;s primary national interest lies in ending its own nuclear isolation and regaining access to international atomic energy trade through the July nuclear pact with the US. It cannot allow any other consideration to come in the way of this long-standing strategic objective. For ideological reasons, the Left may be committed to defending Iranian proliferation. But it is not India8217;s job to make it easy for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
