The friendship axis

Tehran, which had provided direct military assistance to Pakistan during its 1965 war with India (Pakistan Air Force even used to shift their aircraft into Iranian airbases at night to escape the Indian Air Force), and sided with Islamabad in 1971, has been seeking closer ties with New Delhi (including in the defence sector) for more than a decade now.

After some initial hesitancy rooted in earlier pro-Pakistan stance, Iran tilted unambiguously toward India on the issue of Kashmir in early 1990s, when few in the world were even willing to listen to our case or look at the facts. President Rafsanjani expressed Iran’s ‘full faith’ in Indian secularism at the Imambara speech in Lucknow in 1993.

The realists explained this in terms of Iran’s isolation promoted by US ‘containment’ policy. But subsequent events indicate that a deeper understanding of the convergence of interests was already at the root of the changing positions.

The end of Cold War saw Iran, India and many other countries positioning themselves, in the preceding years, to work for the emergence of a truly polycentric (often described as ‘multipolar’) international order where they could better pursue their urgent tasks of human development.

This provides a fundamental convergence of strategic interests between China, Russia, Iran and India, not to talk of even members of the European Union. Iran has been emphasising ‘dialogue of civilisations’ as an alternative to the ‘clash of civilisation’ thesis; and this is in consonance with our values and interests.

Iran, with the fourth largest reserves of oil and second largest reserves of natural gas, lies in the middle of the energy resource-periphery; and a perennially energy deficient India is located in the energy-demand heartland along with China and Japan.

We import around $ 2 billion worth of oil from Iran every year, and this is set to grow. Iran itself needs to move out of its single-product (energy) economy to more diversified means of economic production. And India could be a partner in that process.

Geography has created both challenges as well new opportunities for the two countries. The emergence of the area between the two countries as the epicentre of terrorism, narcotics trafficking and religious extremism created new challenges for both countries.

Tehran has been deeply troubled by the nearly two-decade old Sunni-Shia violence in Pakistan which emerged as a by-product of its Islamisation ideologies and misguided concepts like ‘strategic depth’ (to justify intervention in Afghanistan). Pakistan’s creation of Taliban, terrorist killings of Iranian diplomats and engineers in Pakistan, nearly ruptured Iran-Pakistan relations and provided a strong bond between Tehran and New Delhi. Both have a stake in the reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation of Afghanistan to help it recover from the human disaster that Islamabad and Taliban had pushed it into.

Both countries have been working on finding solutions to challenges generated by geography. Thus the trilateral Turkmenistan-Iran-India agreement, the North-South Corridor Agreement between Russia-Iran and India, and the more recent agreements to open sea-land route through Iran to Afghanistan, signify the pooling of resources for mutual benefit.

The last plan would link into the North-South Corridor on one side and the network of roads in Afghanistan providing it with options other than the earlier dependence on Pakistan. India has extensive experience with infrastructure building, especially with rail and road construction, and this would come in handy.

More important, it would open trade routes to land-locked Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan which even refused to allow humanitarian aid of badly needed foodgrain from India to transit through its territory last year.

But it is the energy flows from Iran (and beyond) to India which is likely to be the centre-piece of future long-term strategic partnership between the two countries. Iran’s energy resources and India’s rising consumption imply natural complementarities which need to be built upon. Options for offshore and overland routes have been under discussion for years. The land-route is obviously more economical. But the security of energy flows has been a major concern for us because of Pakistan’s hostility and its religious groups’ jihad against India.

Pakistan’s unwillingness to move forward on SAARC decisions on regional trade and its WTO obligations (to give India MFN status, etc) tend to undermine the confidence needed for any viable arrangement.

The issue of security of oil/gas transportation from Iran and the region around it has been studied at some length since the mid-1990s. It may be difficult for many people to accept this, but the objective reality is that offshore route is less secure than the land-route through Pakistan. The reason is simple.

Geographically, Pakistan’s coastline sits astride the sea route. In case of disruption of energy flows through off-shore pipe-line, Pakistan would claim that it was not responsible, and we may even find sending a protest note difficult in case the damage was in international waters! Pakistan has been expanding its sea-denial capabilities which could be used to provide cover for disruption of surface transportation, and our choices then would be to use the Navy, which also means war. On the other hand, Pakistan (which must invest, probably by borrowing, to build the pipe-line within its territory) would also hurt itself seriously if the overland route was disrupted in anything but open war.

Cash-strapped Islamabad would have to face severe penalties to self-inflicted injury, and provide international access if its government or its jihadi proxies attempted to cut it. Additional safeguards could be built by getting foreign investments in industry run by oil/gas piped through Pakistan.