The charade on Iran

In India, as in the United States, it is now a well-established tradition that the debate on the Middle East is more about domestic politics than the regional realities. The US Congressmen who are asking India to stop its engagement with Iran, and the Indian parliamentarians who demand that New Delhi stand up against American pressures, are responding to internal pressure groups. Having dealt with this before, Washington and New Delhi are now adept at deflecting the fire from their domestic lobbies.

The Bush Administration will assure the Congressmen that it is taking up America’s Iran concerns with New Delhi. The UPA ministers will thunder that the Indian foreign policy will be made in New Delhi and not anywhere else.

As American opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal clutch at any straw in their final political onslaught against it, every half-baked news report from India on cooperation with Iran is whipped up in Washington as “evidence” of New Delhi’s bad faith.

Both governments, however, know that there is less than meets the eye in the proclaimed strategic partnership between New Delhi and Tehran. Yet persistent posturing has created a potent set of political myths.

• Pipeline Myth: Despite all the political emotions it has whipped up, the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline is hardly strategic from New Delhi’s perspective. When he reversed years of the Indian establishment’s opposition to the IPI pipeline, Manmohan Singh saw it as an Indo-Pak political confidence building measure rather than as an answer to India’s energy problems. If Iran was incidental to this pipeline, Tehran has now made it difficult by quoting an exorbitant price for the gas. Pakistan, too, is demanding unreasonable transit fee.

Even if we can settle on the price, is the pipeline secure against the Baloch people’s threat to blow it up? Would India want to invest in downstream industries without reliable security guarantees from Pakistan?

With Iran under an expanding sanctions regime, it will be near impossible or too costly to raise the much needed international finance for the pipeline. In any case, India can always import liquefied natural gas from the Gulf, including Iran, in ships. Meanwhile, every time any American says ‘no’, India will have to say ‘yes’ to a pipeline that might not take off in the near future.

• Energy Security Myth: This myth is built on a simple proposition that Iran is a major source of...

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The charade on Iran

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