Delhi
dances, Tehran wants to talk By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO,
California - One week after the Israeli Embassy
car blast in New Delhi, reports in India's media
indicate that investigators are still in the dark
and have not achieved any breakthrough.
This is amid growing speculation that this
may have been a case of "homegrown terrorism", ie
Muslim militants sympathetic to the Palestinian
cause; without ruling out the possibility of a
Pakistani hand to harm India's relations with Iran
and thus to alter the regional strategic picture.
Yet, it is abundantly clear that the blast
has triggered a disproportionate political impact,
pressurizing the Indian government, which has
decided to continue and even expand its
vital energy relations
with Iran irrespective of mounting Western
sanctions.
As expected, the United States,
European and Israeli governments and their media
mouthpieces have joined hands in a
well-orchestrated campaign to criticize Delhi's
Iran policy and to try to convince it to curtail
or even cut off its Iranian energy imports.
While India has signed on to various
United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear
program, it is not going along with financial
measures imposed by the United States and the
European Union to stop countries from buying
Iranian oil.
India was Tehran's
second-biggest crude customer last year after
China and Iranian oil accounts for about 12% of
its needs, Reuters reported.
Nicholas
Burns, a George W Bush administration official,
has tried to guilt-trip India by accusing it of
giving "a slap in the face to the US" by its
"bitterly disappointing" decision to continue
business-as-usual relations with Iran, tantamount
to a "major setback" for the US's policy of Iran
isolationism.
According to Burns, this
shows that India is "out of step" with the
international community and is still behaving like
a "regional power" rather than a global power. [1]
In fact, the opposite is true. By refusing
to toe the American and/or Israeli line on Iran,
India has demonstrated its autonomy and
international prestige as a rising global power
that acts according to its own incandescent
atmosphere, needs and priorities, instead of
melting before outside pressures.
This is
not purely a question of India's "energy needs",
but rather a delicate balancing act that involves
the complicated interplay of several variables
beside economics; namely, national identity,
sovereignty and independent foreign policy in a
complex world that, as in the case of India's
cordial relations with both India and Israel,
reflects the difficulties of making constant
adjustments in a highly fluid milieu.
With
its nearly 140 million Muslims, including 36
million Shi'ites, India is compelled to be
sensitive to the natural sympathies of its largest
minority population that may be radicalized if the
government tilts in favor of Israel and sacrifices
its Iran interests in order to appease US and
Israeli politicians.
This recalls what
this author wrote four years ago in Asia Times
Online:
India does not fully operate as the
US wishes and is unlikely to fulfill the new
role discretely assigned to it by the direct
implications of the nuclear agreement, such as
acting as a counterweight to China or even
Russia, in light of improved India-China
relations. Pursuing multiple win-win scenarios
that partially collide, India seeks its own
aggrandizement and, quite simply, this may
thwart rather than enhance the US's geostrategic
interests in Asia in the long run. (Iran
heartened by India's nuclear vote August 5,
2008.)
Although beholden to Israel
for sensitive military technology, India cannot
afford to be seen in league with the Jewish state
against Muslim Iranians, who are to receive a
large trade delegation from India next week, and
who have reportedly agreed to barter their oil for
Indian wheat.
Nor can Tehran expect New
Delhi to sacrifice its ties with Israel, although
the Tehran media are pleased by reports indicating
that some Israelis suspected of covert activities
in India have been deported. [2]
A number
of Tehran analysts have suggested that the
February 13 blast in New Delhi, that injured the
wife of an Israeli diplomat, has the hallmark of a
"false flag operation" targeting India's energy
relations with Iran. It has been compared to the
1992 bombing in Argentina, which was Iran's sole
nuclear partner at the time and immediately ceased
all its nuclear cooperation with Iran because of
the bombing. (See Interpol's
decision time on 'Iranian' bombing Asia Times
Online, November 7, 2007.)
"Given the
enormous importance of the issue, that is, forcing
India to play along with the Western sanctions on
Iran, it is not far-fetched to believe that
Israelis would orchestrate a make-believe attack
on their own interests in India so that Indian
politicians would feel the heat and change
course," says a Tehran University political
science professor who spoke to the author on the
condition of anonymity.
He adds that Iran
is convinced that public opinion in India is
sympathetic toward Iran, which "has heroically
stood up to Western bullying. India is still a
Third World country in so many ways and has a rich
anti-colonial heritage as well as three decades of
nuclear embargo by the West that resonate with the
Iran scenario."
Inspection time in
Iran On Monday, a delegation from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived
in Iran seeking a solution to the outstanding
questions that the United Nations' nuclear
watchdog has regarding Iran's nuclear program,
which some suspect is designed to build nuclear
weapons - a charge Tehran denies.
However,
nuclear inspectors said no progress had been made
as Iran did not grant requests to visit Parchin, a
military site.
"We engaged in a
constructive spirit but no agreement was reached,"
a statement by the inspectors quoted IAEA chief
Yukiya Amano as saying.
No agreement was
reached on how to begin "clarification of
unresolved issues in connection with Iran's
nuclear program, particularly those relating to
possible military dimensions", the statement,
issued on Wednesday, said.
Iranian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on
Tuesday that the IAEA team was not there to
inspect nuclear facilities. "The titles of the
members of the visiting delegation is not
inspectors. This is an expert delegation. The
purpose of visit is not inspection," Mehmanparast
said. "The aim is to negotiate about co-operation
between Iran and the agency and to set a framework
for a continuation of the talks," the Guardian of
London reported.
This, together with
Iran's official response to the European Union's
request for a new round of multilateral nuclear
talks, represents a new attempt by Iran to dispel
the suspicion of nuclear proliferation and to
reassure the outside world that its controversial
uranium-enrichment program is peaceful.
Recently, Clinton Bastin, a top US weapons
specialists, confirmed that Iran's nuclear program
was civilian and not weapons-related and that the
US should end its "dangerous threats" and should
support Iran's nuclear program.
So should
India, which could contribute much to, among other
things, Iran's nuclear safety program and medical
nuclear research.
But this is not likely,
given India's civilian nuclear cooperation
agreement with the US that is now being used as
leverage to steer New Delhi away from Tehran.
Then again, even the likes of Burns know
that it would be foolhardy for the US to risk its
strategic relations with India, eyeing China, over
Iran's nuclear program that, so far at least,
lacks any discernible evidence of proliferation.
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