The recent promise of a thaw in America’s relations with Iran, following the election of reformist-backed cleric Hassan Rowhani as President in June this year, will need careful husbanding by both sides if anything is to come out of it.
The recent promise of a thaw in America’s relations with Iran, following the election of reformist-backed cleric Hassan Rowhani as President in June this year, will need careful husbanding by both sides if anything is to come out of it. The victory of reformist President Mohammad Khatami by 70 per cent of the vote in May 1997 had remained sterile although Mr Khatami’s government had obliquely indicated that a “grand bargain” could be attempted. In documents released as recently as August, the CIA has acknowledged its role alongside Britain’s MI6 in toppling the democratically-elected government of Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq in August 1953. The document notes that the “military coup... (was) carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy”. This coup brought back to power the Shah of Iran, who became a loyal US ally. In the wake of the success of the 1979 revolution of Islamic clerics, the Shah fled to America. The taking of 52 hostages in the US embassy siege in Tehran later that year had the key demand that the Shah be repatriated. That never happened. There is clearly much more than the nuclear question — namely, the strong US and Western suspicion that Tehran is going for a bomb and already has the missiles to deliver it — in Iran-US ties. In his UN speech, the Iranian President, whose diplomatic choreography (which made him abort plans for a chance meeting and handshake with President Barack Obama at the UN, but permitted him to accept a phone call from the US leader as he was heading for the airport to fly home) was much admired in America, spoke of “time-bound and result-oriented talks” with the US. The Iranian leader desires that the dialogue shows results in weeks and months, not years. If the Americans accept the proposition, it will calm down a volatile region of the world, although Washington’s Gulf allies as well as Israel will still remain wary and suspicious. The cooling of the Syrian crisis, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initiative, permits the US to give diplomacy a free rein. But it is evident both sides will have to produce multi-track diplomacy that takes in the nuclear issue and sanctions, the Israel-Palestine question, and some strictly regional matters. India has a strong interest in the success of the US-Iran peace move. It helps us expand economic and commercial relations with Tehran, raise the level of our hydrocarbons relationship in particular, narrow our current accounts deficit with the drop in international oil prices once sanctions against Tehran are lowered and eliminated, and ease India-Iran partnership efforts in stabilising the Afghanistan situation after American forces leave next year.
