India is just another stop on China's Silk Route

There is a certain panache with which China does things these days. Two weeks after a PLA Navy flotilla carried out the first series of exercises to enter the Indian Ocean via the Lombok Straits in Indonesia, Beijing invited New Delhi to be part of the maritime silk route aimed at improving connectivity and trade among Asian nations.
This invitation came during the 17th round of the talks between the Special Representatives of the two countries that took place in New Delhi last week.

Chinese Premier Xi Jinping has invited New Delhi to join the maritime silk route aimed at improving trade among Asian nations

Dialogue

At the talks, the Chinese SR, State Councillor Yang Jichei also invited India to undertake a maritime dialogue with China.
Indian officials have generally welcomed the two suggestions, though they say that the shape, nature and agenda of the dialogue remains to be determined.
But it is the naval drill that has gained a great deal of attention. Three ships, including the Changbaishan - China's largest landing craft which can carry a marine battalion and 15-20 armoured vehicles - crossed the Makassar Straits between Sulawesi and Kalimantan, and then went through the Lombok which is between Bali and Lombok island and entered the Indian Ocean.
According to Chinese sources, the exercise, which used a giant hovercraft made in Ukraine, was to force a passage through the straits by using amphibious forces. Teng Jianxin, a Fellow at China Institute of International Studies, was cited in the Chinese media as saying that the aim of the exercise was to display the ability to break through a strait which may be under the control of an adversary.
Incidentally, the Changbaishan is much bigger than the similar INS Jalashwa that India acquired second-hand from the United States in 2007, and China has three such ships and is making more.
In December, New Delhi floated a tender open to domestic companies for building four ships of the Changbaishan size. But, given the way we do things, it will be a while before we can expect the vessels to actually take to water.
Traditionally, the PLA Navy was configured for coastal defence and the invasion of Taiwan. But it now has oceanic ambitions. According to a report in a Russian military magazine, China is building four aircraft carriers, and may take the number up to six.
Not only are the Chinese experimenting with various advanced technologies like electric propulsion, they have also reportedly mastered the technology of the electro-magnetic catapult which only the US has, and which it has reportedly offered India.
With six carrier battle groups, China will be within hailing distance of US capabilities which are built around 10 carrier groups, with two under construction.

Sea lanes

The maritime silk route idea was first mooted last year when President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang stormed South-east Asia in a major diplomatic foray aimed at winning friends and isolating Japan.
A parallel land silk route is already functioning with Chinese railways, pipelines and roads snaking westwards into Central Asia, towards Europe.
Simultaneously, China has mooted an off-shoot of the silk route to link Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM).
Like many industrialised nations, China depends on the sea lanes for imports, with 80 per cent of its oil transiting through the Malacca straits. But China cannot be unaware that India sits at the head of the straits and a US ally, Singapore, is at its other end.
So, as a matter of abundant caution, Beijing is laying down the alternate routes which include the Lombok straits, and could in future include the Sunda straits as well.
Of course, it must be pointed out that under UNCLOS, all major straits must remain free from blockades even if they are under the jurisdiction of a particular country. Further, going through straits with a flotilla in peacetime is quite different from a wartime scenario.
China is also hedging its oceanic routes by developing land connectivity through Central Asia, Russia and Myanmar.
There is a certain sophistication to the Chinese message. On one hand, Beijing is signaling that its sole interest is in protecting its considerable commercial interests, which includes important energy supplies from the Persian Gulf and Africa.
On the other, it is ensuring that everyone knows that its diplomacy is anchored on strong and rapidly growing PLA capabilities. It will engage with other nations to protect the sea lanes of communications. But if needs be, it will enforce it through the might of its rapidly expanding naval capabilities.

Navy

At the same time, it is not backing off on any of its claims, outlandish as they are, when it comes to the South China Sea. In December, Hainan province announced new rules for fishing in the South China Sea which covered not only Chinese territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, but international waters as well.
This action seems to fly in the face of Chinese efforts to improve ties with ASEAN, especially Vietnam. 
In the SR talks last week, China was at pains to reassure India that at no point would it interfere with the freedom of navigation in the high seas.
This was an oblique riposte at the Indo-Japan joint statement of last month where, the two sides reiterated "the commitment of Japan and India to the freedom of navigation [and] unimpeded commerce," and for good measure, added, "and peaceful settlement of disputes based on the principles of international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)." 

On Saturday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi reiterated China's peaceful intentions to US Foreign Secretary John Kerry. The US has recently, for the first time, made it clear that it does not accept China's exaggerated claims in the South China Sea.
But even as India engages China in a dialogue, or becomes a way station in the sea silk route, New Delhi needs to take some lessons from China and anchor its maritime policies on a strong navy.
As of now, we can more than hold our own in the Indian Ocean against all but the US Navy. But, tomorrow is another day.
Mail Today February 19, 2014

The shifting targets of Arvind Kejriwal

There are things about activists and polemicists, memory has little place in their argument. Arundhati Roy said she would secede from India after the nuclear tests and she is still around; Medha Patkar threatened ‘jal samadhi’ many times, but, of course, with the grace of God, she, too, is still very much with us. So it is with Kejriwal. He first denounced politics, and then decided to contest elections. Despite the fact that his party did exceedingly well, but not enough to form a government, he swore he would not take the support of the BJP or the Congress, but within a week, accepted the Congress support to form a government that is now history.

The collapse of the Aam Aadmi Party government on Friday has opened itself up to as many analyses, as the streams of opinion that constitute the party, and I suppose, this republic. Arun Jaitley of the BJP says it is the end of a nightmare. The Congress and Shiv Sena said that he ran away from responsibility. Others say it is deep strategy to get out of a losing game and jump onto a winning one — the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

You would have to have been an incredible optimist to believe that it was going to work in the first place. Here was a man who had built up a movement that tore the insides out of the United Progressive Alliance. He reluctantly entered formal politics, but shocked everyone by winning 28 out of 70 seats in the Delhi state assembly elections, just three behind the BJP, whose party it spoilt. After playing coy, he accepted Congress support and formed the government, which came apart last Friday.

From the outset, he declared war on two key pillars of any government — the administration and the police. For this, he got the grateful thanks, not so much of the middle-class which wanted better governance, but the poor who face the brunt of the thoroughly corruption riddled system daily.

All this while, Mukesh Ambani did not figure in Kejriwal’s demonology. But suddenly, he is there, now manipulating the Congress and the BJP to bring down the AAP government. At the heart of the Kejriwal system is the concept of constantly shifting targets. When one proves elusive, head for the other. So, first it was the Congress, then the Delhi administration and now Mukesh Ambani, BJP and Narendra Modi.

Kejriwal thrives on constant movement and all-pervasive enemies. In another time and place, they yielded fascism.

But thankfully, as of now at least, Mr Kejriwal does not believe in strong arm tactics, though his lieutenant Somnath Bharti is not quite above that either. In another era, Kejriwal, a saviour like Robespierre or Mao would have simply shot/guillotined his opponents, and replaced the government with his men. But in the era of democracy, he had to confront a system that works with thorough rules. And the rules said that he did not have a majority. It also said that the administrators and police could not be purged simply by fiat; there had to be due process.

Since taking on, these two key components of administration, who are admittedly overwhelmingly corrupt, was central to the Kejriwal mission. It was clear that he was not interested in making things work, but on making a point and having made that in 49 action-packed days, he has left Delhi still waiting for its saviour.

Well, it’s not just Delhi. It is the whole country and that is what lends power to the AAP. The system is rotten; both principal parties have run it at various times, but they have simply used it to their own benefit, leaving the masses to their fate.

As if to highlight the Kejriwal drama, the national Parliament was showing last week just how unconcerned it is about the issues that affect the people. And the message coming across from everywhere seems to be that there is no hope.

But, and this is the beauty of democracy, it leaves us options, unlike the poor Chinese, who had to suffer Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution in succession, losing tens of millions. There can be little doubt that the churning that we are witnessing is going to come up with a positive result for the nation. No, it may be Modi, and it may not. Changes of the kind the country is looking for do not come in election cycles. These relate to longer term social and behavioural shifts.

There can be no doubt that we need a paradigm change in governance, not just in the way our police and municipalities function, but how our corporates behave towards investors, banks and consumers. It is difficult not to see that one era — the one that came with Mandal and the crony capitalism of liberalisation — is coming to an end. There are some who would take us back up the road to the Mandir. But that, too, is not what the country is looking for.

Mid Day February 18, 2014

India must focus on events yielding results

Strategic opportunity does not keep knocking at your door for too long. China’s rise and its estrangement with Japan has provided New Delhi with an opening that we would be most foolish to ignore. Whatever may be the rhetoric about building multi-polar relations with nations across the board, India needs to realise that it needs to concentrate its effort on occasions that will yield results, rather than chasing the will-o’-the-wisp.
There are two reasons for this opening. First, the increasing bellicosity of China vis-à-vis Japan and second, the Indian entente with the United States. Tokyo and New Delhi are not about to create an anti-Chinese alliance; yet, there can be little doubt that the estrangement between Japan and China is to our advantage. We cannot replace China as a destination for Japanese investment and trade. Some 90,000 large and small Japanese companies operate in China, as compared to just about 1,000 in India. But, starting off as a hedge for Japanese companies, we can attract significant Japanese investment and technology, which can trigger our own manufacturing revolution.
There are two components to the relationship — economic and security. The economic relationship between the two countries has taken off with a sharp rise in Japanese investment into India since 2005, and Japanese companies have made a cumulative investment of $12.66 billion in this period. India has become the largest recipient of Japanese Overseas Development Assistance in the last decade, receiving as much as $36 billion in concessional loans and grants. Relations between the two countries are set to grow further with the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2011. The Abe visit, brought more commitments on the part of Tokyo.
The Japanese perspective on security emerges from the rapidly changing global power balance in favour of China; to this can be added the factor of technological change. In addition, because of North Korea, Tokyo is also painfully aware of the threats arising from WMD proliferation, terrorism and cyber attacks. Japan says that China is rapidly advancing its military modernisation without much transparency, and in the case of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, it is attempting to change the status quo through coercion.
Close US-Japan ties have ensured that Tokyo has been able to maintain its pacifist attitude in the face of grave provocations, for example, from Pyongang. For their part, the Japanese believe that no nation can maintain its own peace and security alone and that they need the assistance of their allies and partners as well. If anything, given the developments with China, they would like to strengthen their alliance with the US, which has famously declared its neutrality on the Senkaku-Diayou island dispute, even while affirming the US-Japan security pact.
In recent months, the Abe government has taken other measures to signal its hardening stand on security issues. As of December 2013, it has created a National Security Council and adopted a new National Security Strategy. For the present, they continue to swear by their pacifist constitution, but with a bit of a nudge from the Chinese, things could change in the coming years.
Japan’s new approach towards national security is to: 1) Strengthen its diplomacy with a view of creating a stable international environment 2) Develop its defence forces steadily and maintain a posture that can deal with an array of situations 3) Protect its territorial integrity 4) ensure maritime security and insist on a regime based on the rule of law 5) Come up with a new set of principles for transfer of defence equipment overseas in view of the new security environment 6) Strengthen cyber security, take measures against terrorism and insist on peaceful uses of outer space.
The Japanese maritime self-defence forces (MSDF) have, at various times, exercised with the Indian Navy and during the Abe visit, a specific invite was given to them to rejoin the Malabar series of exercises that we have with the US.
The Indian and Japanese Coast Guards have been exercising together since 1999 and held their most recent exercise in January 2014.
The lengthy joint statement after the Abe visit underscores the belief that both India and Japan sense opportunity in the current geopolitical situation. The joint statement noted that the two countries have a common view on ‘freedom of navigation, unimpeded commerce and peaceful settlement of disputes’ based on the principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). They also agreed on the importance of the ‘freedom of overflight and civil aviation safety’ in accordance with the principles of international law and the rules of
the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The bit about ‘peaceful settlement of disputes’ and the issue of overflight and civil aviation safety was new language as compared to past joint statements, and they unambiguously pointed towards China.
India and Japan still need a great deal of patient dialogue and effort to transform the opportunity they have into reality. They need to clinch the Indo-Japan nuclear deal, if only to clear the decks for cooperation
in other high-technology areas. Likewise, they need to successfully conclude their negotiations for the US-2 amphibian aircraft, which Tokyo has offered India. The US-2 may be a minor issue, but behind it lies the promise of deeper ties with Japan in high quality technology, which can be used for defence purposes.
Mid-Day February 4, 2014

India has failed to cash in on its relationship with America

Why has no leader of the United States of America ever been the chief guest at India's Republic Day parade?
After all, we have had presidents, prime ministers and kings from all over the world, and, horror of horrors, even leaders from China and Pakistan. But the US seems to be a strange absence in our guest list.
The choice for a chief guest for the Republic Day is fraught with many meanings. It can be a signal for the strategic direction the country intends to take, such as the one sent by having Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan as the chief guest for the 2014 celebration.
Likewise, we have had Iran in 2003, Brazil in 2004, Saudi Arabia in 2006, or Indonesia in 2011.
Another perennial has been the Russian/Soviet president who has come thrice, with President Putin attending most recently in 2007.
In other cases we celebrated our closeness to another country such as Bhutan, whose king was the chief guest in 2013 for the fourth time.
Some choices, though, are simply baffling - for example Peru (1987), Argentina (1985) or Bulgaria (1969).
Symbolism
In 1958, we had a People's Liberation Marshal, Ye Jianying.
Even Pakistani leaders have been welcome, notably Governor General Ghulam Mohammed in 1955 and agriculture minister Rana Abdul Hamid in 1965.
Other leaders of the Western world, the prime ministers and presidents of Britain, Australia, Germany and France have come, but not the Americans.

 

Some would say that these are mere symbols and do not mean much. But symbols, too, have their own purpose.
They are a code that reveals the texture of a relationship. And as symbols go, notice that no American president, even the sainted Lincoln has been graced with a road, leave alone a statue in New Delhi.
We have an Archbishop Makarios Marg, named after the first president of Cyprus, an Olof Palme road, and roads named after Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser and Mandela, Ataturk, Alexander Dubcek, but none for, say, John Kennedy who came to India's assistance in our dark hour of defeat in 1962.
In many ways, our relationship with the United States is the most important external relationship we have.
As the global hegemon since the end of World War II, a friendly US has much to offer - aid, investment, expertise, political heft.

By the same measure, an unfriendly US can and does cause a great deal of trouble. India has seen both sides of this coin.
American aid was the key in preventing mass starvation in the 1960s, its expertise revamped our higher education and triggered the green revolution.
Most crucially, its political blessings ensured that India remained a favoured destination of World Bank assistance, and, more recently, in removing India from the global civil nuclear blacklist.
But the same US also created our greatest security nightmare by propping up the military junta in Pakistan and arming it to the point it began to think itself as a rival of India.
Likewise, the Sino-US détente kept India off balance through the 1970s and 1980s. Some analysts believe that some of the problems in the Indo-US relationship have been structural.
These relate to differing world views, conflicting economic priorities and asymmetries in their national power.
Cold War
In the 1950s, India saw economic development as its principal challenge and sought to promote world peace through non-alignment between the two power Blocs.
However, the US saw the principal problem as arising out of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its allies.
In economic terms, the US pursued the path of liberal capitalism, seeking open markets for investment and trade.
India, on the other hand, adopted a "socialistic" model and closed off its economy from the rest of the world. Since this model failed to deliver, India failed to develop its comprehensive national power and the existing asymmetries between the US and India on this score prevalent in 1950 remained.

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Allies: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (right) and President Barack Obama (left) pictured in Delhi in 2010. The US remains one of India's most important international allies

The end of the Cold War may have changed many things, but it has not altered New Delhi's mindset on non-alignment, which has now morphed to the concept of "strategic autonomy."
On the economic side, India has changed and accepted the liberal nostrum, but not fully. Significant barriers to investment and trade remain, often only because of the existence of a retrograde bureaucracy.
As for military power, the asymmetry remains, though India is now a nuclear weapons state. However, by refusing to reform and restructure its armed forces it persists in de-rating their capabilities.
Relationship
Even so, notwithstanding the recent spat over the Khobgrade affair, India and the US are much closer than they ever were.

But, there is a significant difference between the texture of the relationship that the US enjoys with other democracies like UK, Germany, France and Japan, and the one it has with India.
And neither are we able to cash in on it to the extent the Chinese and the Pakistanis managed. In great measure, this is as much a consequence of persisting Indian weaknesses in the economic and military fields, as the quality of its political leadership which cannot take the country beyond its strategic posture of "passive restraint".
Economic and military power create their own dynamics and somehow, India has not been able to reach the point where it is taken as a serious interlocutor in the power dynamics of Asia.
But to come back to our original proposition. Why is it that India finds it so difficult to acknowledge and openly further a relationship with the United States?
To an extent it reflects the continuing distrust of the US in relation to our predicament with Pakistan. But to a greater extent it reflects a national inferiority complex.
The Americans are like a rich relative, whose help we think we are entitled to, but whose help we do not want to acknowledge because they highlight our own failure to accumulate the currency of power - a flourishing economy or a powerful military. 
Mail Today February 4, 2014

The Bluestar story is too complex for yes and no answers

Last week there was a furore over the revelation of a letter indicating that the British Special Air Services (SAS) may have been involved in the operation to evict Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in 1984.
Speaking in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister David Cameron was compelled to deny charges of SAS involvement in Operation Bluestar. He told two MPs, who have a large minority of Sikhs in their constituencies, that he wanted to know the truth as well and had ordered an inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary to ascertain the facts.

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Past mistakes: Intelligence on militants in the Golden Temple was inadequate

Facts

In India, Major General K.S. Brar, who had commanded the forces involved in Operation Bluestar, also denied the allegation emerging from two documents of February 1984, declassified and released this month, suggesting that India had asked, and UK had agreed to provide, advice from the SAS.
The truth is somewhat more complex. Both Cameron and Brar are right in saying that the SAS was not involved in Operation Bluestar in any way. Actually, according to sources, they were involved in another operation which was planned before Bluestar, and which was cancelled.
This operation was planned using the commandos of the Special Frontier Force (SFF), who are army personnel, seconded to the Research & Analysis Wing.
Based in Sarsawa, near Saharanpur, this force originally comprised Tibetans and was raised for use in Tibet against the Chinese. Subsequently, this has evolved into a super-special forces unit which carries out unspecified intelligence-related duties.
According to the story I heard back in the late 1980s, the SFF was ordered to develop a plan for taking out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from the Golden Temple in late 1983. The force came up with a plan where its personnel would disguise themselves as Sikhs, penetrate Bhindranwale's durbar at the Guru Nanak Niwas in the Golden Temple complex and whisk him away.
At the last stage, the commander of the force was summoned by Mrs. Gandhi and asked to brief her on the plan. Her main question was: What are the chances that people will be killed in the operation? The commander said that there was no guarantee that there would be no casualties and as many as a dozen or more people could be killed. At that Mrs Gandhi balked.
However, things only went from bad to worse. So in May 1984, Mrs Gandhi was compelled to revisit the issue. By that time the militants within the Golden Temple had fortified themselves and become even more powerful.
Under the command of ex-Major General Shahbeg Singh, they had systematically developed defences against any Army attempt to seize the Golden Temple. This involved siting kill-zones, establishing strong-points, and accumulating weapons and ammunition in significant quantities.
Further, Bhindranwale had taken shelter in the Akal Takht and stopped his durbars.

Tragedy

The story of Operation Bluestar is too well known to be recounted here. The tragedy is that Mrs. Gandhi, who had flinched at a dozen or so casualties, eventually ordered an operation that led to the deaths of hundreds - military personnel, Sikh militants, as well as innocent pilgrims who were caught in the crossfire.
The SFF was involved in Bluestar, but in a smaller role as part of the initial assault along with the 10 guards and 1 para commandos. This assault failed because the well-sited guns of Shahbeg Singh mowed down the commandos.
With the benefit of hindsight we can say that the state of intelligence about the preparations made by the militants in the Golden Temple was woefully inadequate. Not only did events push the country to the terrible dénouement of Bluestar, but the fact that in those days, the Golden Temple was hemmed in by the city and there was little or no chance of conducting a prolonged siege.
After Bluestar, the government took the precaution of clearing some of the houses around the Temple and building a circular road.

R&AW

The Research & Analysis Wing played a significant role in the struggle against Sikh militancy, especially since a great deal of support for the militants came from the Sikh diaspora settled in countries like the UK, Canada, Germany and the US. In addition, Pakistan's ISI provided, and indeed continues to provide, Sikh militants shelter in Pakistan.
The militants managed to smuggle a considerable arsenal that they had obtained in Pakistan into the Golden Temple, which included light and medium machine guns, rocket launchers and rocket-propelled grenades.
At the time of Bluestar, Girish (Gary) Saxena headed the R&AW. But the legendary Rameshwar Nath Kao was the security adviser to Mrs Gandhi and was closely associated with the handling of the Punjab issue.
Even though India was supposed to be close to the Soviet Union, the R&AW headed by Kao was firmly aligned with the western camp. It had, in any case, been set up through the recommendations of British advisers in the 1960s, and had liaised with the US in matters related to China, such as the infamous Nanda Devi caper.
US personnel were involved in training the Special Services Bureau, now the border guarding force for the Nepal border. At that time, the SSB was seen as a "stay behind" force to conduct a guerrilla war against putative Chinese occupiers. India also had links with the Israeli intelligence.
Following Indira Gandhi's assassination in October 1984, Kao sought the assistance of Israeli specialists to design the new prime minister's security detail, which included guarding the person and residence of the PM, and securing his cavalcade.
In the tense aftermath of Bluestar and the Sikh massacres, the SFF was called upon to provide the security, a job it had never earlier trained for. Today, the NSG claims to be "Black Cats", but the actual "Black Cats" were the SFF commandos with their black dungarees and maroon berets, who provided the security for the PM and several of the top ministers threatened by the Sikh militants.
They went back to their shadowy existence in 1985 after the NSG was established. 

Mail Today January 21, 2014

Re-kindle Indo-Iran ties

On Monday, the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 nations — the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China — kicked into the first phase of its implementation. The deal, which has the potential of changing the geopolitics of the South-west Asian region, if not the world, is as of now a series of steps through which Iran will begin the process of stopping and rolling back its nuclear programme, in exchange for the western countries easing sanctions that have crippled its economy. The whole process will be confirmed through a final agreement which will be negotiated over the next six months by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

 

Mutually beneficial: India needs Iran for its energy needs as well as access to Afghanistan via Chah Bahar port. 

Given the history of the long and tortuous negotiations between Iran and the western countries over its nuclear programme in the past decade, fingers are crossed in respect to the final agreement. Some hardliners in Iran have actually hailed the deal, but there are many naysayers in the US, especially in its powerful Congress who are skeptical.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are unhappy for their own reasons. The White House, for its part, is also playing it cautious and its statement noted “With respect to the comprehensive solution, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

Put simply by the end of the six month period, Iran’s uranium stockpile would have been diluted to an enrichment cap of 5 per cent, though it will continue to hold the stockpile it has and have the capacity to enrich uranium to the 5 per cent level. It will have stopped work in the Arak reactor and desisted from building reprocessing facilities which could enable it to also obtain plutonium to make nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons require a core of plutonium, or uranium enriched to above 90 per cent. 5 per cent is what is sufficient for reactors that generate power.

The P5+1 and EU will commit themselves to temporarily shelve the sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and material imported for use in its motor industry, suspend efforts to block Iranian crude purchases around the world, allow trade in bullion and return $4.2 billion seized from Iran in tranches over the next six months.

Iran has had nuclear ambitions ever since it was ruled by the Shah of Iran. But following the revolution of 1979 that brought its current Mullah-led regime into power, Iran had formally abjured from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. In any case, Iran was a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state.

However, in the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war probably brought a re-think in Teheran. The country suffered grievously in the war, losing hundreds of thousands dead. Further it could not but have been aware that the Iraqi aggression, including chemical weapons attacks had the passive support of the West.

The mullahs began thinking of getting some nuclear insurance and probably authorised a clandestine programme.

From the mid-1990s, the Iranians asked the Russians to resume work in the Bushehr nuclear plant which had been damaged by Iraqi attacks. But Iran obtained technology from multiple sources, including the notorious A Q Khan network.

In 2002, an Iranian dissident organisation revealed the existence of a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak, subsequently in 2009, Iran itself admitted to building another enrichment plant at Fordow.

Iranian offers for a “Grand Bargain” failed when the Bush Administration refused to accept Iranian bona fides. Later the EU took up negotiations with Teheran. But the negotiations failed and the IAEA, though it said it could not definitively say Iran was making nuclear weapons, formally reported the country to the UN Security Council which has imposed as many as six sets of sanctions on Teheran.

The P5+1 negotiations have been going on since 2009, but recent developments have led to its success. First, the United States directly entered into the negotiations instead of cold shouldering Teheran. Second, the change from the abrasive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presidency to that of the pragmatist Hasan Rowhani has aided the process. Third, the sanctions have bitten deeper than Teheran thought they would and the Iranian economy has been devastated by them. Because of the sanctions, Iran not only has difficulty in getting customers for its oil, but also finds it difficult to get either technology or finances to develop its considerable oil and natural gas assets. Fourth, not only is the US no longer dependent on Persian Gulf oil, but it has learnt that Sunni extremism is a far greater danger than the essentially conservative Iranian mullah regime. Fifth, in the Obama administration, Iran has an interlocutor which is willing to do business in contrast to the Bush administration.

The developments have vindicated India’s position which is that Iran had the right to enrichment, but not to make nuclear weapons. Further New Delhi resisted efforts to block oil imports from Iran. India needs Iran for its energy needs as well as access to Afghanistan and Central Asia via Chah Bahar port.

India’s decision in 2009 to vote with the US to censure Iran in the IAEA is still resented by Teheran. India and Iran are, in their own way, natural allies, a fact underscored by the increasing anti-Shia nature of Pakistan. We need them more than they need us and so we must begin the process getting Teheran off its great sulk against us.

Mid Day January 21, 2014