BY PRAFUL BIDWAI
AFTER the invasion of Iraq, nothing has as sharply fractured the international community as the crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities, and the United States’ high-powered effort to corner Teheran. Convinced that “Axis-of-Evil” state Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons after having become the Middle East’s “greatest exporter of terrorism” (according to Condi Rice), Washington precipitated a confrontation with it at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors with help from the European Union-3 (Germany, France and Britain).
This confrontation presented an extraordinarily tough challenge to India-indeed, a litmus test for its foreign policy independence. How would India defend Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear activities while voicing concerns about “proliferation” in the “neighbourhood” at Washington’s goading? How would it balance its energy security and regional interests, which lie in friendship with Iran, against “strategic partnership” with Washington? Could India maintain its leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement while ducking the Iran issue?
In the event, India comprehensively failed the test. It sacrificed its policy independence. It even subordinated its vital interests to its unequal partnership with Washington. India’s vote was primarily driven by its keenness to join the global cabal called the Nuclear Club on American terms under the July 18 nuclear deal.
In the process, India split NAM, the bulk of whose weighty members abstained from the vote, including Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia, Algeria and Nigeria. Even tiny Sri Lanka and our neighbour Pakistan abstained. India dealt a major blow to its own standing in the world, particularly among the peoples of the Global South, where it belongs.
The Vienna vote showed India at sixes and sevens. It endorsed a motion indicting Iran for “non-compliance” with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards. But its Foreign Ministry says that “finding Iran non-compliant is not justified”; the IAEA Director-General’s reports concede that “good progress has been made in Iran’s correction of [alleged safeguards] breaches”. So India should have opposed the resolution, which lays the ground for reporting Iran to the Security Council because its activities raise “peace and security” issues, which are within the Council’s “competence”.
The Indian decision to vote with the US “in a crunch situation” was taken even before Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US. (The Hindu, Sept 17) This was done after the US sent a lobbying delegation to New Delhi, led by under-secretary for disarmament Robert Joseph. India then acted out a mere charade. It colluded with the US-EU-3 in gratuitously altering IAEA decision-making procedures, from consensus to a majority vote, which would facilitate an anti-Iran resolution.
India’s post facto rationalisation was that the resolution would facilitate diplomacy to resolve the Iran crisis. In fact, the crisis got aggravated: Iran feels offended and terms the resolution “illegal”. And the US is triumphalist. Iran feels badly let down by India not only because the two have had excellent political and economic relations-including in balancing Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan-, but because Teheran regards India, with Russia and China, as “big states in the eastern hemisphere”, which “can play a balancing role in today’s world”. (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly)
India claims that it kept Iran fully informed, indeed pleaded its case globally and “helped” it: Iran hotly denies this. It says Manmohan Singh didn’t give Ahmedinejad an inkling of India’s voting intentions when he called him two days earlier. Numerous India-Iran oil-and-gas-related deals/proposals could be jeopardised, affecting India’s energy security. This is especially so with the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, now under advanced negotiation. This holds the key to economic integration of the entire South Asia-West and Central Asia region.
At the root of India’s shameful stand are misperceptions about Iran’s nuclear activities and a craving to get India “normalised” as a nuclear weapons-state. It was revealed in 2002 that Iran had years earlier acquired a small number of uranium centrifuges. Other countries, including Israel, Pakistan, Taiwan, the two Koreas and India too, have indulged in clandestine nuclear acquisitions. Most got away. Iran was targeted because of deep-rooted US prejudices and an eye on the Gulf oil. Iran adopted a highly cooperative attitude towards IAEA inspections. These haven’t revealed evidence of a military programme.
Traces of enriched uranium were detected on some equipment. But these were sourced to imports from A Q Khan’s network.
IAEA reports, including the latest (September 2), don’t conclude that Iran has violated its NPT obligations. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, Iran is five to 10 years away from a weapons capability. Iran’s nuclear effort is crude. It has a pilot plant at Natanz, with just 164 centrifuges, in place of the thousands needed to make one bomb a year. Isfahan has a facility to convert uranium oxide to hexafluoride gas. But the gas is “too contaminated with… molybdenum and other elements to be used as feed material”.
The EU-3’s mediatory effort wasn’t honest. It was wound up after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won as president against the ‘moderate’ Rafsanjani. The EU reneged on its original incentives package and demanded Iran abandon enrichment forever. Iran refused to renounce its sovereign right and resumed conversion.
The US-EU-3 then decided to confront Iran at the IAEA. For credibility, they needed a Third World heavyweight-collaborator. India played their game. The Vienna resolution imposes harsh demands upon Iran — even tougher than the IAEA’s intrusive Additional Protocol. It demands greater inspection powers, including “access to individuals… and R&D locations”. Iran is being pressed to convert its 2004 legally non-binding offer to suspend enrichment into an obligation. Iran is being given third-degree treatment, like Iraq in the 1990s. Such abuse of power sets a terrible precedent which could be invoked against another country the US doesn’t like.
India’s cooperation with Iran isn’t only economically, but also politically, significant. In the 1990s, Iran repeatedly came to India’s rescue at the UN human rights commission over Kashmir. The two have high stakes in working together. The real question is: Does India’s future lie in South Asia, linked to West and Central Asia, and Southeast-East Asia? Or does it lie with Washington? New Delhi shouldn’t fudge the answer.
Praful Bidwai is a veteran Indian journalist and commentator. He can be reached at bidwai@bol.net.in
