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Slow and unsteady

BENDING protocol, without waiting for formal announcement in Tehran on the magnificent election victory of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s President for another four-year term, PM Narendra Modi expressed “heartiest congratulations to my friend”.

Slow and unsteady

INERT: There’s been no followup on the Modi-Rouhani meeting in Ufa two years ago.



MK Bhadrakumar

BENDING protocol, without waiting for formal announcement in Tehran on the magnificent election victory of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s President for another four-year term, PM Narendra Modi expressed “heartiest congratulations to my friend”. Modi added, “India remains committed to strengthening our special relationship with Iran.” Indeed, the ABC of doing business with Iran begins with a good personal rapport with the Iranian interlocutor, and upswing in ties with Iran is one of the few foreign policy successes under the present government.

The Iranians are a highly cultured people and taarof (Iranian politeness) is a system of politeness that includes both verbal and non-verbal communication. They may protest compliments but do secretly enjoy them. While dealing with Iran, networking is important and what you know is far less important than who you know. It is pertinent to recapitulate these “pre-Islamic” Persian cultural traits because Iranians are deliberate negotiators. Some Indian envoys did well in their diplomatic assignment in Tehran while many faded into oblivion.

Modi seems to be familiar with taarof. But then, caveats must be added. For a start, incredible as it may seem, Rouhani never visited India in his first term as President. During the four-year period, he visited Islamabad (twice) and Kabul, and probably even overflew India en route to Vietnam or Thailand and Indonesia. This is a startling fact, Modi’s description of India’s “special relationship”  notwithstanding.

Yet, undoubtedly, the Modi government has salvaged the moribund India-Iran relationship and tried to breathe fresh life into it. The point is, through the past decade, whereas Washington might have asked us to bend, we apparently chose to crawl to cozy up to the US’ containment strategy against Iran. Therefore, the alacrity with which the Modi government went about resuscitating the relationship — once the American interference began waning — is commendable.

On the other hand, clouds of uncertainty are gathering on the horizon due to a misperception that President Donald Trump is preparing for a historic confrontation with Iran. It is important that we accurately gauge the dissimulating US-Iranian rhetoric. Simply put, the time is past for the US and Iran to cross swords. Neither is spoiling for a fight. A military attack on Iran will be prohibitively expensive for the US in human lives, apart from collateral damage on its key allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular. Iran will not roll back its missile programme, which is its deterrent, and Iran’s “axis of resistance” remains proactive. Hezbollah has over 1 lakh missiles targeting Israel.

However, Iran’s strategic asset is its extraordinary acumen in diplomacy, its seamless capacity to turn unhelpful narratives to advantage. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a case in point. In the downstream of the invasion, Washington settled for a modus vivendi with Tehran based on common interests in Iraq’s stability and unity, riveted on Shi’ite empowerment. The most lethal weapon in Iran’s diplomatic armoury is engagement. Iran doesn’t shy away from engagement. The US has historical experience of it in Iraq and earlier on in Afghanistan and Lebanon. The US has realised that without engagement with Iran, its Middle East strategies will remain ineffectual. Thus, at present there is growing evidence that Russia could be mediating for the US (and Israel) with the Iranians regarding the security arrangements for southern Syria (near the Golan Heights) — the so-called “deconfliction” zones. Again, in the fight for the liberation of Mosul from the Islamic State in Iraq, the US military and Iran-supported militia are having common cause. 

In his first remarks after election victory on May 20, Rouhani said the election’s message for the world is clear: “The Iranian nation has chosen interaction with the world, free from violence and extremism. Iran has decided to live with the world in peace and friendship, but is not ready to accept humiliation, imposition, or threat.” Make no mistake, Rouhani intends to step up Iran’s diplomatic outreach, especially with the West, including the US. Iran will leverage its economic diplomacy to constructively engage with the West. Therefore, our policy makers need not lose sleep that Trump might feel upset if India deepened its engagement with Iran. As the saying goes, early bird catches worms, and India should intensify its engagement with Iran before its market gets overcrowded with Western companies.

Another simplistic notion in the Indian discourses is as regards Iran’s potential to be a “third front” vis-à-vis Pakistan. This notion stems from a zero-sum mindset. The point is, although Iran-Pakistan relations remain complicated for a variety of reasons, the two countries also observe “red lines”. Besides, Iran is India’s natural ally on issues of terrorism and extremism and there is really no need for India to cash in on Iran-Pakistan tensions. If the Indian policy makers could take a more relaxed view of the bilateral ties with Iran instead of frontloading them with geopolitics, and build solid content into the relationship, the regional balance inevitably works to our advantage.

Energy cooperation is God’s gift to India-Iran ties. There is perfect complementarity in terms of market conditions, geography and the political economies of the two countries. However, there are distressing signals in regard of Farzad-B gasfields, a potential game changer. Last Thursday, Iran’s petroleum minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said India had failed to make an appropriate offer to finalise the “development, financial and commercial” terms for the gasfield, which might prompt Tehran to tie up with Russian companies instead of ONGC Videsh. Clearly, the Iranian energy market is becoming very competitive.

Given emergent market conditions, Iran cannot be expected to sell gas at discount. The unpalatable truth is that we dragged our feet on the Farhan-B gasfields, which Iranians had offered on a platter before the sanctions. Equally, the proposed undersea gas pipeline connecting Chabahar with Porbandar in Gujarat needs to be expedited. After all, the expected landed price of gas at Porbandar will be much less than current LNG import prices. It makes far greater sense to negotiate a reasonable price for gas from Farzad-B and transport it through a pipeline to Porbandar than import shale gas from the US.

Quite obviously, Modi’s congratulatory message to Rouhani suggests that he may have outstripped the Indian bureaucracy in his enthusiasm for the “special relationship” with Iran. Just look at the abysmal performance after Modi and Rouhani discussed at their path-breaking meeting in Ufa two years ago to usher in a brave new world of Indian projects in and around Chabahar. Things are moving at a snail’s pace.

The writer is a former ambassador

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