Indian Foreign Ministry officials dealing with Iran must have heaved a sigh of relief after Hassan Rowhani — a more moderate of the presidential candidates in fray — was declared a decisive winner in the Persian nation’s 11th presidential elections a couple of weeks back.
The polls, marked by a remarkably high voter turnout, were watched closely in India, especially because Iran happens to be New Delhi’s gateway to the Middle East and the central Asian region, helping India meet its energy and other strategic requirements.
Moreover, India’s relationship with Tehran has its root in ancient history with the rich Persian culture leaving a deep imprint on traditional Indian music, literature and architecture. Periodic invasion during the course of history as well as cross migration of populace has ensured that the two civilizations share common cultural and ethnic characteristics. But then, in spite of boasting a robust bonding, India’s relation with a post-revolution theocratic Iran hit a low as successive regimes in New Delhi failed to warm up to the religious clerics, apprehending a possible Iranian tie-up with archrival Pakistan across the western frontier.
Late Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq was at the helm at that point of time, virtually redefining Pakistan’s approach to religion. Those were the days when Afghanistan was on the boil and India’s fears were unfounded given the fact that Tehran drifted into the Soviet orbit due to Ayatollah Khomeini’s deep-seated antipathy toward the West, particularly Americans. Khomeini found America to be more threatening than the Soviets and always believed that Washington was out to overthrow him. He preferred to align with Moscow despite the fact that the atheistic philosophy on which the Soviet Union was founded was patently incompatible with the way of life that most of the Iranian institutions espouse.
Even though Khomeini’s Iran was on the same page with New Delhi so far as providing logistical and other support to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan was concerned, the conservative Iranian leadership, however, was wary of India’s regional aspirations in central Asia and her expanding cooperative relationship with the Western world.
However, with passage of time, the Iranian apprehension over New Delhi’s relationship with the West and for that matter Israel has dissipated as both the countries have agreed in an extremely matured way to ensure that diplomatic relations maintained by each other should not come in the way of fostering a pragmatic bilateral cooperation.
This is a critical juncture in the history of the Middle East with the declining American influence in the region and Turkey, a strong Western ally, finding itself in the grip of a civil revolt.
As Turkey witnesses the emergence of a new force of young activists ready to take on the traditional Turkish approach to democracy, India must gear itself up to the inevitability of new realities dawning over the Middle East.
Indeed, Indian Foreign Ministry has shown utmost caution in expressing the country’s position on contentious regional issues like Iran’s nuclear program, sectarian violence in Iraq, Syria and the fate of Palestine. Though domestic political developments do influence foreign policy decision-making, especially in a pre-general election year, it remains to be seen how effectively the external affairs policy process is insulated from internal actors whose views and policies are antithetical to larger Indian interests.
Some loose remarks coming from political leaders vying to capture Muslim imagination might jeopardize the sensitive Indo-Iranian relationship literally hanging by a thread. For instance, the principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) president Rajnath Singh while congratulating Rowhani for his historic victory ended up sermonizing the Iranian state on the importance of liberalism, completely oblivious of the fact that concept of freedom in theocratic Iran and democratic India, have different yardsticks.
Obviously, with an eye on the Shiite Muslim vote bank — whom the BJP prefers over the followers of Sunni tradition partly due to tactical and mostly because of ideological reasons — Singh grabbed this opportunity to woo the Shiite Persian state in his inimitable style, hoping that it bears fruit in the next general elections.
Undoubtedly, the Indian security establishment too is concerned about the long-term implication of Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the last thing that New Delhi wants is another nuclear-armed nation sitting beside Pakistan in a crucial corridor linking the Middle East and the central Asia with the Indian Subcontinent. But then at the end of the day India has to walk a fine line between appeasing one of the country’s major oil suppliers and simultaneously protecting her vital strategic security interests in the region by way of preventing the same vendor from arming itself with nuclear weapons.
As the rupee’s continuous slide against US dollar in recent times stimulates runaway inflationary trends due to rising fuel expenditure, leaving the Indian treasury fretting about how to bridge the yawning fiscal deficit, the Persian state remains the only option to get cheaper oil. China is already exploiting the situation by demanding discounts and better terms on Iranian crude in return for diplomatic backing at international forums. There is no reason why New Delhi, being the second largest importer of Iranian crude oil, cannot extract similar concessions.
Tehran is keen on holding on to India as a valued customer by offering lucrative deals of developing strategic Iranian oil fields, routing proposed natural gas pipelines through sea route and seeking possible assistance in strengthening civil nuclear energy sector. So, the risk-averse foreign office mandarins might at long last be tempted to constructively engage the moderate president-elect- Hassan Rowhani, a close confidante of Supreme Leader Ali Ali Khamenei, in a bid to cement India’s meaningful role as a serious arbitrator in the rapidly evolving region.
