South Asia in a spot over Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar

It would be an understatement to say that as nuclear powers in Iran's immediate neighborhood, India and Pakistan will be affected by the denouement of the Iran nuclear issue. Without doubt, the region's security environment will never be the same after November 25, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets to peruse the Iran dossier. Yet the two South Asian nuclear powers maintain studied reticence. In a fashion, the two powers that were considered "renegades" in the world nuclear order have become responsible players.

India and Pakistan enjoy close relations with Iran - India routinely names Iran a "strategic" partner, while Pakistan effusively addresses Iran as a "brotherly" country. Yet on Iran's nuclear issue they tread softly lest they trespass into the first circle of US geopolitical concern in the region at the moment. Ruffling the US feathers over Iran over the delimitation of the nuclear non-proliferation regime is not like quibbling over market openings for textile quotas. It is a veritable minefield. Iran is an issue, as William Wordsworth wrote, "that is felt in the blood and felt along the heart" in Washington.

(On Sunday, Iran told the IAEA it would suspend uranium enrichment and processing activities as part of a deal with the European Union to avert any UN Security Council sanctions. Tehran stressed that the suspension was only temporary.)

A curious byproduct of the three-year-old "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan seems to be that though Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar may have eluded capture, Washington has never before enjoyed such moral authority in Delhi and Islamabad concurrently.

India broke its silence when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that India was of the view that Iran should "honor the obligations and agreements to which it is a party". He added that India hoped that the issue would not be "excessively politicized" and that "it can be dealt with within the framework of dialogue between Iran and the IAEA".

Will Pakistan follow suit?
Singh made the statement while traveling to The Hague to attend the India-European Union summit meeting on November 8, where, conceivably, the topic of weapons of mass destruction proliferation would be an agenda item. Also, the Euro-3 (the United Kingdom, France and Germany) negotiations with Iran over the issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program seemed to be inching toward a mutually acceptable agreement.

Also, China had come out with a position that Iran warmly welcomed. At a press conference in Tehran on November 6, visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing made the point that Iran's nuclear issue should be dealt with by the IAEA as China believed that "Iran's cooperation with the IAEA is good" and, furthermore, that "to bring the matter to the United Nations Security Council will only further complicate the issue and make it more complex than necessary and more difficult to work out". Li was quoted as saying, "We believe Iran's nuclear dossier should be resolved in the IAEA and we oppose any use of force or threats in this regard." China has made its views on the subject known to the US and Britain.

On the face of it, the Indian statement contains much the same elements as articulated in the Chinese position. But Iran has not reacted.

The Indian statement and Pakistan's continuing silence show the complexities of having to charter a course between two irreconcilable impulses, namely, the desire to pursue an independent foreign policy toward Iran vis-a-vis the propensity to view issues concerning Iran at this point in time through the prism of their potential impact on advancement of one's partnership with the US. China's relatively explicit stance proceeds from a position of principle, which leaves Beijing with an enviable autonomy.

The pillars of the Iranian submission - that it is Iran's prerogative to gain complete mastery over the nuclear fuel cycle - fall within the four walls of the nuclear policy pursued by successive Indian and Pakistani governments for the past three or four decades. India and Pakistan, too, had chafed at the inequities in the non-proliferation regime. Both India and Pakistan had sought deterrent against perceived nuclear threat.

India and Iran are a bit like the famous lovers on English poet John Keats' Grecian urn - "For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair." Their relationship is full of unfulfilled promise. If there are complementarities for beneficial cooperation available between any two sovereign countries in the present-day world, it is between India and Iran. Yet their cooperation leaves vast untapped reserves.

The previous "Hindu nationalistic" National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Delhi had proceeded to step up the directions of strategic cooperation with Iran, which it considered to be in India's supreme national interests in the long term - though the NDA was every bit ideologically committed to India's globalization and had no need to do grandstanding with a Muslim country like Iran, having no electoral dependence as such on a Muslim "vote bank" in domestic Indian politics. But, that was a period full of imperatives - the high noon of the Taliban era - when India and Iran shared core concerns and vital interests.

India ought to be better placed than Pakistan vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear issue. Delhi does not suffer from "Abdel Qadeer Khan syndrome" - the father of Pakistan's nuclear program connected to proliferation.

The recent US sanctions on two Indian scientists for their alleged role in Iran's nuclear program could be interpreted as a thoughtful attempt to bring about some parity into the South Asian "imbalance".

According to Iran, the US acted on the basis of information leaked to the American intelligence by the IAEA inspectors who happened to visit seven Iranian military establishments which would have had dealings with India within the framework of bilateral military cooperation protocols negotiated by the NDA government in Delhi with Tehran. India was categorical in its denial, supported by facts, that the two scientists had anything to do with Iran's nuclear program. By imposing sanctions nonetheless, and through subsequent innuendos by senior US officials to the media that there could be sanctions on more Indian entities to follow, Washington seems to link the future directions of India's strategic involvement with Iran with India's search to be accommodated as a recipient of sensitive US technology.

Iran of course is far too important a regional power for India to allow itself to be chaperoned by Washington. A notable instance was when Iran broke ranks with the Organization of the Islamic Conference consensus on the resolution (which had Western backing) condemning India over human-rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, in the UN forum in Geneva in April 1994.

Pakistan, on the other hand, is better placed since it had all along, despite appearances, a bristled relationship with post-Shah Iran.

The Iranian temperament is, generally speaking, very pragmatic. But purely in terms of expediency or self-interest or both, Iran might at some point draw a distinction between those friendly countries which had been supportive when the push came to the shove and those which lingered in the shadows.

The fact remains that Iran has just concluded a massive energy deal with China under which: (i) Iran has awarded to China a project to develop the Yadavaran oil fields; (ii) Iran will supply 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil to China over a 25-year period; (iii) China will purchase 10 million tonnes of liquified natural gas from Iran annually for a 25-year period; (iv) The two countries will cooperate in Central Asia in the energy sector.

A predicament seems to lie ahead. In the congratulatory letter addressed to President George W Bush on his re-election, Singh said that "as partners against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction proliferation, we will stand by the United States in strengthening international peace and stability".

In the US estimation, it is Iran (not North Korea, not Pakistan, no longer Libya) that sponsors terrorism, pursues a clandestine nuclear-weapons program and poses a threat to world security and stability. It is a regime that Bush would have loved to throttle in its cradle, in a Churchillian sort of way, even a quarter-century ago. Yet neither India nor Pakistan can be expected to be a part of an American solution to the problem.

M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian career diplomat who served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and Moscow.

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