:: Opinion

Can India facilitate a US-Iran dialogue?

By Shankar Roychowdhury

Oct 20 : Does Iran have a clandestine nuclear weapons programme? The question comes almost straight out of a television script, but without any prizes for the correct answer, because there are none as yet, only indications, suspicions, and speculation blowing in the wind. Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, refutes the charge completely even as the inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric of its leadership contributes to the escalation of tensions, while the United States and its associated chorus of Western governments seem sure that such a programme does exist, and are raising a storm over it within and outside the United Nations.

Russia and China, both founder-members of the Nuclear Five (also permanent members of the UN Security Council), maintain a facade of bland ambivalence, while India, not in the same league, nurses its own apprehensions and concerns over such a possibility but is discreetly silent for the present. How comfortable would India be with a nuclear-armed Iran? Again, no definite answers, but it can be assumed that the prospect of another Islamic republic (this time Shia) controlled by hardline ayatollahs acquiring nuclear weapons would undoubtedly create substantial unease in this country.

But in another context, India is also aware that its own long-term strategic interests and aspirations for a significant presence in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond, requires a positive engagement with Iran because of the strong and pervasive influence the latter exercises in the Dari-speaking Farsiwan regions of western and northern Afghanistan around Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and with Shias in the Hazara belt, where the Pashtun-based Taliban do not have local support. (Dari is closely akin to Farsi, the official language of Iran, and is spoken by 50 per cent of the population of Afghanistan). India has to rationalise its misgivings about a nuclear-armed Iran and chart its course accordingly, because unlike Indo-Russian relations during the Soviet era, or Indo-US relations at present, Indo-Iran relations could never progress beyond a certain level mainly due to misgivings about the tone and tenor of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979, and perceptions of its distinct tilt towards Pakistan during the Indo-Pak war of 1965, and also in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). However, as a Shia state, Iran also has its own scars to show from the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Pakistan-based Sunni terrorist group Jundullah. Among these are the abduction and subsequent murder of 11 Iranian consular staff in Mazar-e-Sharif after the Taliban entered the city on August 8, 1998, and attacks on Iranian forces, political personalities and government infrastructure along the Balochistan-Iran border. There seem to be sufficient common interests between India and Iran for jointly addressing the threat to both countries posed by radical jihadi organisations like Al Qaeda, which have a major anti-Shia agenda as well.

With direct surface access to Afghanistan and Central Asia blocked by a hostile Pakistan and China respectively, it is imperative for India to create viable alternate routes to the resource-rich regions of Central Asia, for which the Persian Gulf littoral is vital. India has, therefore, done well to enter into a strategic relationship with Iran to develop the port of Chahbahar on the Gulf of Oman and its associated road network, to connect onwards at Zaranj in Afghanistan with the Soviet-built necklace highway through the 218-km Delaram-Zaranj link road from the Iran border recently constructed by India through its Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in the teeth of armed attacks by Taliban forces sponsored by Pakistan, which views any Indian presence in the region with extreme disfavour, as the second car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul recently reconfirmed so resoundingly.

But at another level Iran has been, and still is, in the crosshairs of the United States long before President George W. Bush designated it as one of the components of the so-called "axis of evil". The mutual ill-feeling between the two countries remains undiminished since 1979 when the dethronement and expulsion of the pro-American Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Khomenei, and its accompanying purges in the American-trained Iranian military generated a wave of anti-American feeling in the country, and resulted in the prolonged siege of the US embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis. For the United States, attitudes on the Iran nuclear issue are seen as the touchstone for determining the credentials of its relationships with all other countries, creating a dilemma for India, which is strongly engaged with the United States and has successfully concluded a fairly unique and unprecedented bilateral agreement after an extended bilateral strategic dialogue which accepts India’s requirement of civilian nuclear technology and also makes place for India’s strategic nuclear programme outside the scope of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The hard choices in this context were highlighted in September 2005 when after considerable agonising India threw in its vote along with the United States and against Iran on the issue of international inspection of nuclear facilities in the latter country by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), and subsequently again to further refer the matter to the Security Council when the IAEA failed to resolve the issue. (It is instructive to note that both China and Pakistan, India’s constant opponents on every international issue, decided to abstain on both occasions).

Close interaction with both the United States and Iran is, therefore, inescapable for India because of multiple compulsions, strategic as well as regional. Relations with both countries have to be harmonised, and whatever be the state of our relations with the United States, India has to remain engaged with Iran to best advantage. Indo-Iran-US equations are a tough test for Indian diplomacy, but can the outcome of the recent US-Iran talks in Geneva perhaps create a role for India as a mutually acceptable facilitator between the two countries? That is a possibility which might be worth exploring.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament