Opinion Best of half-options

The Obama administration is having to rethink an Iran strategy that relied on Middle Eastern allies to counterbalance Tehran’s conventional forces and prevent cheating on economic sanctions. A new containment policy is being structured by Washington with the installation of anti-missile batteries in Arab states and with an emerging plan to put more ships and anti-missile batteries into the Persian Gulf. There is little likelihood of more serious sanctions as the Chinese and Russians remain opposed to any new sanctions and have already made it clear that the revealing new evidence by the IAEA will only harden Iran’s position.

India shares with the West the belief that Iranian nuclear ambitions would be destabilising for the Middle East. The prime minister is on record suggesting a nuclear Iran is not in India’s national interest. But New Delhi does not have the luxury of viewing Iranian nuclear ambitions only through the prism of the Iran-Israel rivalry which is the norm in the West. India has to consider this issue from a much wider perspective where Iranian nuclear ambition becomes a product Arab-Iran,and especially Sunni-Shia,rivalry. For Tehran,its nuclear ambitions are as much a counter to a two-front encirclement of Shias by Sunni Pakistan and Sunni Saudi Arabia as it is about ending Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region.

The Riyadh Declaration signed in January 2010 during Dr Singh’s visit to Saudi Arabia asked Iran to “remove regional and international doubts about its nuclear weapons programme”. In fact,India has even endorsed the Arab call for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East — a proposal traditionally targeting Israel but increasingly focused on Iran.

India’s broader position on the Iranian nuclear question is relatively straightforward. Although India believes Iran has the right to pursue civilian nuclear energy,it has insisted Iran should clarify the doubts raised by the IAEA regarding Tehran’s compliance with the NPT. India has long maintained that it does not see further nuclear proliferation as being in its interests. This position has as much to do with India’s desire to project itself as a responsible nuclear state as with the very real danger that further proliferation in its extended neighbourhood could endanger its security. India has continued to affirm its commitment to enforce all sanctions against Iran as mandated since 2006 by the UN Security Council,when the first set of sanctions was imposed. However,much like Beijing and Moscow,New Delhi has argued that such sanctions should not hurt the Iranian populace and has expressed its disapproval of sanctions by individual countries that restrict investments by third countries in Iran’s energy sector.

India would like to increase its presence in the Iranian energy sector because of its rapidly rising energy needs,and is rightfully feeling restless about its own marginalisation in Iran. Not only has Pakistan signed a pipeline deal with Tehran,but China also is starting to make its presence felt. China is now Iran’s largest trading partner and is undertaking massive investments in the country,rapidly occupying the space vacated by Western firms. Iran’s total crude exports to China increased 47 per cent from January to July 2011,compared to an identical period the previous year. Where Beijing’s economic engagement with Iran is growing,India’s presence is shrinking,as some firms have,partially under Western pressure,withdrawn from Iran and others have shelved their plans to make investments.

The strategic reality that confronts New Delhi in West Asia today is that India has far more significant interests to preserve in the Arab Gulf,and as tensions rise between the Sunni Arab regimes and Iran,India’s larger stakes in the Arab world will continue to inhibit Indian-Iranian ties. At the same time,Delhi’s outreach to Tehran will remain circumscribed by the internal power struggle within Iran,growing tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbours,and Iran’s continued defiance of the global nuclear order.

The writer teaches at King’s College,London
express@expressindia.com