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WSWS : News & Analysis : Asia : India

India in quandary over US-Iran conflict

By Vilani Peiris and Keith Jones
30 November 2005

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India’s United Progressive Alliance government made it known early last week that, when the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met in Vienna November 24, it would oppose referring charges that Iran has failed to fulfill its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to the United Nations Security Council.

The Stalinist-led Left Front was quick to hail the government decision, which contradicted press reports, including in the well-connected Times of India, that the UPA government had decided that if the issue were to come to a vote India would cast its lot with the US and EU-3 (Britain, Germany and France) and against Iran as it had done at the September 24 IAEA meeting.

“The government briefed us about the diplomatic efforts to avoid sending the Iran nuclear issue to the UN,” Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury told reporters November 21 at the conclusion of a meeting of the UPA-Left Front coordination committee. “We are satisfied with the manner in which the government is trying to avoid such a situation.”

However, it soon emerged that the US and EU powers had already decided that they were not going to push for immediate referral of Iran’s alleged breaches of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to the UN Security Council.

Seen in this light, the UPA announcement to oppose referral at the November 24 IAEA was a transparent ruse, made so as to fend off criticisms that it has buckled to US pressure in regards to Iran, a country that India has invested considerable energy in courting in recent years as a market for its military equipment and, more importantly, a major source of oil and natural gas.

The US and EU-3 have claimed that they decided not to press for immediate referral of the Iran issue to the Security Council because they want to give time for further negotiations on a Russian proposal that would see Russia enrich Iranian-supplied uranium hexafluoride gas at Russian facilities and then return it to Iran.(While touted as a compromise, this proposal would place Iran in a unique category of inferior power denied the right accorded all other NPT signatories to develop all facets of a civilian nuclear energy program.)

The real reasons for the US-EU climbdown at last week’s meeting are complex: The US and EU powers still hope to secure the full cooperation of Russia and China, both of which have important economic relations with Iran; the US, sinking ever deeper into a military and political quagmire in Iraq, wants to explore the possibility of securing Teheran’s assistance in pacifying the country. Only a few days after the IAEA meeting, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told Newsweek that President Bush has authorized him to hold the first direct US-Iranian talks since the spring of 2003. Said Khalilzad, who played a significant role in preparing the political and geo-political terrain for the US invasion of Afghanistan, “I’ve been authorized by the president to engage the Iranians as I engaged them in Afghanistan directly.”

The western imperialist powers remain intent on using the nuclear issue to bully Teheran, threatening it with diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, even war. The British Ambassador to the IAEA, Peter Jenkins, was particularly provocative, declaring at the November 24 meeting that Iran has documents whose only purpose could be to assist a nuclear weapons program. He added that Britain retains the right to press for an emergency meeting of the board of governors before the next IAEA meeting, scheduled for March, to deal with the Iran issue. US Ambassador Gregory Schulte was only slightly more restrained. He said, “Iran must understand that the report to the [Security] Council is required and will be made at a time of the board’s choosing.”

According to the Hindu, Indian officials were “happy and relieved” that a frontal collision between the US-EU and Iran was avoided at the most recent IAEA meeting.

Undoubtedly this is a true. India’s attitude toward the confrontation between Iran and the US-EU is an important element in a major conflict that has erupted within India’s political and economic elite over the extent of India’s geo-political and military ties with the US, a country which during the Cold War was firmly aligned with its traditional arch-rival, Pakistan, and which repeatedly tried to bully India into serving US geo-political interests.

In particular, there is disagreement over whether India should accept the Bush administration’s offer of help in transforming India into a world power—an offer which is clearly motivated by Washington’s calculation it can use India as a strategic counterweight to China in Asia.

Much of the dispute over the extent of India-US ties has focused around the US’s offer to press for India to be accorded a special, indeed unique, status within the world nuclear regulatory regime.

The UPA government views this agreement, which was sealed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s July visit to the US, as a major coup, since it makes India a de facto member of the Big Five nuclear-weapon states and would give it access to the civilian nuclear technology of the US and other NPT signatories.

Others, however, have warned that the US is seeking to ensnare India in a complex of military and technology agreements, so as to gain leverage over India’s foreign policy. This faction of India’s elite, for whom the Left Front is an articulate spokesmen, advocates that India aggressively pursue US investment and trade, but otherwise remain true to India’s traditional policy of “non-alignment.” India, this faction argues, can best pursue its own “national interests”—that is its predatory, great-power ambitions—if it keeps its distance from the US.

India’s vote against Iran at the September 24 IAEA meeting confirmed the worst fears of this faction. In a major break from India’s historic diplomatic/geo-political posture, the UPA government voted in favor with the US and EU-3, while Russia, China and prominent member-states of the Non-Aligned Movement abstained, on a motion that accused Iran of “non-compliance” with the NPT and threatened to refer the issue to the UN Security Council for punitive action.

Adding insult to injury, while India cast its lot with the US, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, whose governments are notorious for toadying to Washington, abstained.

In the run-up to the vote, prominent US politicians made clear that the IAEA vote would be a test case to determine whether India merited US support in becoming a great power. In other words, the US’s continued support for the nuclear deal hammered out in July was contingent on India doing Washington’s bidding against Iran.

The UPA government has angrily denied that US pressure had any influence over its IAEA vote. “Our positions in international fora are invariably determined by our independent assessments which are consistent with our policy pronouncements and anchored in our larger national interest,” declared India’s Ambassador to the UN, Ronen Sen.

But the government’s claims have been repeatedly undermined by the statements of US politicians and Bush administration officials.

The US Ambassador to India, David C. Mulford, spoke out in protest earlier this month when the soon-to be ex-foreign minister of India, Natwar Singh, said he would counsel the government to vote at the coming IAEA meeting against referring the Iran issue to the Security Council. India, said Mulford, “had expressed its assessment of its national interest” at the September 24 meeting and “we expect India to assess its national interest and vote accordingly” at the coming meeting.

By and large India’s corporate media was supportive of India’s vote at the September 24 meeting. Typical was an editorial in the Indian Express titled “Sign of Maturity.” It began, “In deciding to vote in favour of the European resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday and demanding that Iran comply with its nuclear obligations, the government has signaled a new maturity in India’s foreign policy. In one stroke, India has told the world that it will follow its own interests in deciding on global issues. India is saying it is not a mere protestor in the international debates on non-proliferation; that it means what it says when claiming to be a responsible nuclear weapon power. On the multilateral front, India’s vote will now have to be earned. It cannot be expected to come automatically as part of third world ‘groupthink’. All to the good.”

But the voices questioning or outright opposing India’s position at the IAEA and the US-India nuclear deal have grown in number and alacrity in recent weeks, as the US has attached further demands to its nuclear offer. These include that New Delhi place much of its civilian nuclear program under international supervision before the US Congress will make the legislative changes needed to permit civilian nuclear-power technology transfers to India.

According to the Hindu, well-known Indian strategist Matin Zuberi recently authored a paper arguing that India should allow the civilian nuclear deal it has reached with the US to lapse, because of “the onerous conditions” Washington is now trying to impose.

India’s second largest party, the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has traditionally been the most pro-US of all India’s myriad political parties. But, no doubt in part out of calculations of electoral advantage, it has joined in the criticisms of the government for being too accommodating to Washington. In the run-up to last week’s IAEA meeting it refused to take a position, saying it wanted to see what the government would do first.

Just as the UPA has pressed forward with the neo-liberal reforms of the BJP-led coalition that preceded it, it has pursued essentially the same geo-political and foreign policy path as the previous government—massively increasing India’s military spending, and pursuing ever-closer ties with the US, while simultaneously seeking to maintain or develop strategic partnerships with Russia, the EU, and China.

The UPA and Indian states’ geo-political strategists are acutely aware that Washington is courting India because it views India, along with Japan, as the linchpins of its strategy for containing China. But India’s current regime is gambling that it can finesse its status as what the CIA has termed the key “swing state in the world geo-political order” to gain significant geo-political advantages from closer relations with Washington, while avoiding dangerous entanglements.

Whatever the outcome of the conflict between Washington and Teheran over Iran’s nuclear program—and many surprises could yet been in store—the events since July have shown that this is a most dangerous game.

Washington’s offer to assist India in becoming a world power is conditional on New Delhi accepting the role of a junior partner of an ever-more bellicose and crisis-ridden US imperialism.

See Also:
India: removal of foreign minister points to struggle over extent of US ties
[22 November 2005]
US woos India with support in becoming a “world power”
[22 July 2005]