Beijing’s Trajectory in Science and Technology Shows India Is Far Behind in the Game

In Aurangabad, Satyapal Singh, the minister of state for human resource development which oversees the country’s higher education system, has questioned Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that no one has actually seen an ape turning into a man.

In Jaipur, thousands of women brandishing swords took out a ‘Chetavani Rally’ and threatened to commit jauhar or ritual collective suicide by jumping into a fire.

If you get the depressing impression that the country is rapidly regressing to the medieval ages of ignorance and superstition, you would not be wrong.

In contrast, US’s National Science Foundation and National Science Board have recently released their biennial science and engineering indicators which provide detailed figures on research and development (R&D), innovation and engineers. But its true message is in a different direction, “China has become,” concludes Robert J. Samuelson in a column, “or is in the verge of becoming – a scientific and technical superpower. This is not entirely unexpected given the size of the Chinese economy and its massive investments in R&D, even so, he says, “the actual numbers are breathtaking”.

1. China is the 2nd largest spender in R&D after the US, accounting for 21% of the world total which is $2 trillion. It has been going up 18% a year, as compared to 4% in the US. An OECD report says that China could overtake the US in R&D spending by 2020.
2. China has overtaken the US in terms of total number of science publications. Technical papers have increased dramatically, even if their impact, as judged by citation indices, may not be that high.
3. China has increased its technical workforce five times since 2000 to 1.65 million. It also has more B.Sc. degrees in science than any other country and the numbers are growing.
4. The US continues to produce more PhDs and attract more foreign students. But new international enrollment at US colleges was down for the first time in the decade in 2017. The Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and actions are scaring away students.
5. China has begun shifting from being an assembler of high-tech components, to a maker of super computers and aircraft and given the pattern of its investments in R&D and technology development, it is focusing on becoming the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum communications, quantum computing, biotechnology and electrical vehicles.
6. As of now, the US still continues to lead in terms of the number of patents and the revenue they generate.

China has also become a more attractive destination for foreign students and is now occupying the third slot after the US and the UK. This year, it is likely to gain the second spot.

China now has a serious programme to attract its own researchers back to the country. The thousand talents plan targets scientists below the age of 40 who have PhDs from prestigious foreign universities. The government offers 500,000 RMB ($80,000) lumpsum to everyone enrolled in the programme and promises research grants ranging from one to three million RMB ($150,000-$300,000). The funding for the programme is growing and in 2011, China awarded 143 scientists out of the 1,100 who applied, and in 2016, 590 from 3,048 applicants.

Individual Chinese universities are offering several times that sum. One specialist in advanced batteries from an MIT post-doctoral programme was offered a salary of $65,000, $900,000 as research grant and $250,000 to buy a house.

The report also flagged the serious deficiencies in US higher secondary education where in 2015, average maths scores for the 4th, 8th and 12th graders dropped for the first time. In the field of R&D and patents and revenue accruing from them, the US remains ahead, but the recent anti-immigration trends pose a serious long-term risk to the American supremacy because in essence, the US has been the best in harvesting talent from across the world.

Of course, the quantity of money or the number of research papers by itself does not automatically translate into leadership. The US remains the world leader in investment in basic research (17%) versus 5% in China. It remains the leader in top quality research, attracting the best and the brightest of international students and in its ability to translate basic research into revenue-generating intellectual property.

But the Chinese have been putting serious money into key areas which they aim to become world leaders in the next decade or so. One of these is AI where the government and Chinese corporates are moving in a big way. Just recently, Chinese tech major Baidu announced its decision of setting up two more AI labs in the US, one focusing on business intelligence and the other on robotics and autonomous driving.

There is little point in flagellating ourselves by putting the Indian figures alongside those of the US and China. Given the profoundly anti-science attitude of our government leaders, things are not likely to change in a hurry. But it is worth looking at the latter’s trajectory because some in India still see themselves as competing with China. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting Davos to attract investment, presumably in high-tech areas, it is worth reminding ourselves that science and technology is the core of the economic foundations of an advanced country, which China says it intends to become by 2050.

The Wire January 23, 2018

The Doklam dimension

Reports of a Chinese buildup in the Doklam area should be occasion for worry. This was an area where the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had a prolonged standoff between June and August 2017, which was resolved only on August 28, 2017. At the time India had issued a statement that both sides had agreed to an “expeditious disengagement” at Doklam. The face-off had started after Bhutanese and Indian troops had stopped a Chinese road construction team at Doklam, which India considers Bhutan’s territory.

However, Google Earth imagery as of December 10, 2017 revealed that the Chinese withdrawal was literally of tens of metres from the point where Indian and Chinese troops had faced off and since then they have built up significant strength adjacent to  the site. In some ways it is in response to the fact that India, too, has had significant forces at around 150 metres away up the ridge at Doka La. These were the forces that blocked the Chinese efforts to build a road to the Jampheri ridge.

In response to a question on developments in Doklam at the annual Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat said  on Wednesday,  “They [the Chinese] have carried out some infrastructure development, most of it is temporary in nature. But while their troops may have returned and the infrastructure remains, it is anybody’s guess whether they would come back there, or it is because of the winter they could not take their equipment away that.”

Earlier in his annual Army Day press conference, the General Rawat had said that the August 28 agreement had been aimed at separating the two forces. “We have come back from where we had stepped in, (back) to our own territory. We are now back on the watershed. And the Chinese too have gone back that much distance. But behind that, they have continued to maintain themselves.”

Given that Indian forces had entered around 100-150 metres into the territory disputed by Bhutan and China, the presumption is that the Chinese pull back also amounted to that distance. And that is what the December 10 imagery reveals.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar strongly reiterated the government’s position that there has been no change in stance since the disengagement in August. He said that “there was no basis for such imputations” to repeated questions about the presence of Chinese troops at Doklam. “The government would once again reiterate that the status quo at the face-off site has not been altered.” He went on to add, “ Any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate and mischievous” .

In August, at the time of the disengagement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said that India had withdrawn their troops, but remained silent on the status of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers. “China will continue to exercise its sovereign rights and maintain territorial sovereignty in accordance with the provisions of the historical conventions.”

This time around, another Chinese spokesman Lu Kang rejected implications of the Indian reports that China may be preparing for another standoff with India. Lu, declared that: “China’s position on the Donglong (Doklam) area is quite clear. Donglong always belonged to China and (was) always under China’s effective jurisdiction.”

He said China’s construction there was “ legitimate and justified. Just as China will not make comments on India’s construction of infrastructure in India’s territory, we hope other countries will not make comments on China’s construction of infrastructure in its own territory,” he said. He said China is building infrastructure for its troops and the people living in the area. “In order to patrol the border and improve the production and lives of border troops and residents, China has constructed infrastructure including roads in the Donglong (Doklam) area,” Lu said. He said China was exercising sovereignty in its own territory.

Referring to Army Chief General Bipin Rawat’s comment that Doklam is a disputed territory between China and Bhutan, Lu said: “The Indian senior military officer has recognised that it was the Indian border troops who crossed the border… This incident has put bilateral relations to… severe test. We hope the Indian side can learn lessons from this and avoid the incident from happening again.”

Clearly, the Chinese are not backing off and neither is India. This, then, has the potential for a more serious clash between the two sides unless the issue is diplomatically resolved. That resolution is, of course, complicated by the fact that India has no claim on Doklam; the claimants are China and Bhutan. Given the latter’s lack of state capacity, China began nibbling on Doklam since 2005. Last June they sought to occupy their entire claim area and Bhutan would have been unable to resist but for the Indian intervention.

For the Indians, the issue relates to its friend Bhutan and its own security. There is no treaty that automatically commits India to Bhutan’s defence. But given the country’s location it is clear that the security of India’s north-east is inextricably tied to that of the little Himalayan Kingdom.

India’s security is also affected directly in the Doklam region. If China occupies the entire area up to the Jampheri ridge it will get  an overview of the Siliguri corridor, a narrow neck of land that joins the north-east to the rest of the country. Just as China does not countenance countries that are seeking access to islands close to its mainland, India cannot accept the Chinese presence in this area.

Greater Kashmir January 22, 2018

Super Toil Across Years Begets Power

The current phase of India’s rel­ationship with the United States took root in the early 1980s, when Indira Gandhi abandoned her socialist pretensions and moved to reconcile with the power she believed had tried to overthrow her in the run-up to the Emergency.

From the Indian side, there came a search for investments and technology; from the US, a desire to displace the Soviets and, after the Tiananmen Square massacres, a durable partner to balance China. Thereafter, there were many ups and downs, but in the past decade it has largely been up, coinciding, no doubt, with China’s trajectory.

Earlier this month, Ken­neth I. Juster, the new US ambassador to India, delivered his first major speech to foreign policy wonks in New Delhi. Speaking to assembled think-­tankers, columnists, journalists and a phalanx of retired Indian diplomats, Juster spoke about the goal of  building a durable partnership between India and the US in the 21st century. Such speeches are not new, but the value of Juster’s remarks are in the fact that they were delivered by the envoy of Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the US, whose mission seems to be to upend everything the US has stood for and done.

Being the seasoned diplomat that he is, Juster punched all the right buttons—his personal friendship with India, our common values and interests, the Indo-Pacific Region, the strategic partnership, defence and counter-terrorism, econo­mic and commercial relations, energy and environment, science & technology and health, and regional cooperation.

India has been lucky that it has got an ambassador of Juster’s calibre, someone who knows India and has played a significant role in altering the texture of the India-US relationship for the better. He has a profound understanding of the dyn­amics of this relationship as he was a key official in the Dep­art­ment of Commerce when India and the US est­ablished the ‘Next Steps in Strategic Partner­ship’ that worked its way into the India-US nuclear deal.

Juster highlighted the important element of trust. But, in all fairness, it is not immanent in the relationship as it is, say, among the ‘Five Eyes’. It is something of a work in progress, requiring detailed legal commitments on the part of India, as on the case of the 123 Agreement, or the General Security of Military Information Agr­eement (GSOMIA) and the Logistic Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), as well as the ones that are still pending—the Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) for geospatial intelligence.

Since World War II, the US has largely worked in an environment where its allies and friends have also been states for whom it is the net security provider. India, a nuclear weapons state with a large military, does not quite fall into that category. The Americans are now beginning to understand this and have gone along with tailoring many of their “foundational” agre­ements to suit their Indian friend.

Juster’s description of the process, involving “respect, trust, acceptance confidence and resilience and constancy” has not been easy, and neither has it happened overnight. It is an ongoing process that began with the Gandhi-Reagan Science and Technology Initiative of 1984.

That brings us to the idea expressed by Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar first, and more recently in the new Trump National Security Strategy (NSS), that India is “a leading power” in the Indo-Pacific region. Truth be told, at present India remains a “balancing power” and Jaishankar’s 2015 reference related to India’s aspiration to be a leading power, rather than an assertion of being one. Some Indian commentators have decided that India is already a leading power and a net security provider in the Indian Ocean Region. To act on this would be a grave error. Fortunately, the US wants us to only play a balancing role in the Pacific Ocean, and sees the “leading” role somewhere in the unspecified future.

We, too, want the Ame­ricans to be balancers in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region. This is where the Indo-Pacific con­­cept comes in. By str­etching the Western Pac­ific into the Indian Ocean, China looks smaller. As is evident, even though China is a force in the Wes­tern Pacific, it is still some distance away from that position in the Indian Ocean Region. It is still useful to have its foremost power, the US in your corner, especially when your own military mod­­­er­­nisation and reform are not going anywhere.

As I heard Juster, a question came to my mind, one that had been nagging me since the time we initiated a strategic dialogue with the US in 1989-90. He spoke of the entire gamut of India-US relations and referred to the US NSS. Yet there was complete silence about an India-US role in a region that is unarguably the most important for us—the reg­ion between Pakistan and Israel, call it West Asia or the Middle East. Sixty per cent of our oil comes from there, seven million of our nationals work there, sending back $39 billion per annum, much more than the self-anointed pat­riots of North America. Dubai, an entrepot, is India’s third largest trade destination, after China and the US.

By no metric is the Indo-Pacific as imp­ortant for India as is the northern Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Issues like freedom of navigation and overflight are significant, but these are world order issues, important everywhere. In contrast, the volatility of the Persian Gulf region stands out. Just three years ago, India had to send its navy to rescue nearly 5,000 citizens from Yemen. We have had to launch similar operations in Iraq in 2003 and 2014, Lebanon in 2006 and in 1990 we carried out the biggest airlift in history to get 1,75,000 Indian nationals out of Kuwait.

This is also an area where Indian interests diverge from that of the US. The US is no longer critically dependent on the oil exports from the region, as we are. On the other hand, the US remains committed (it has an entire fleet and several military bases in the region) for three reasons—to ensure that the jehad virus (which it helped create) does not spread to Saudi Arabia or Egypt, to protect Israel and to ensure that the oil res­ources of the region do not fall into the hands of any combination of hostile powers. And then, there is Pakistan, which is sui generis.

India shares most US goals, but they are complicated by America’s Israel mission which, too would be okay, exc­ept that the US wants regime change in  Iran, a dreadful prospect knowing what happened when it obtained one in Iraq. Iran is the most proximate major source of oil for India and has an anchor role in India’s Central Asian and European connectivity plans through its ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas.

The India-US agenda is larger than the Middle East, as Juster outlined. But the region looms much larger for us than for the US. Our differing goals are not ­unbridgeable, but if we are indeed to evolve a durable strategic partnership in the 21st century, we need to, at least, begin a conversation about this region. But all Juster did was to dust-off an old idea of posting Indian liaison officers to US combatant commands, here, the CentCom. Given the differing ways our militaries relate to government, this was a non-starter and remains one.

Juster detailed India-US cooperation in defence through joint exercises, defence trade and military exchanges. India is a Major Defence Partner of the US, which provides us access to technologies at a level equivalent of its closest allies and partners. Like all countries, the US would rather sell finished products than provide technology, no matter what it says. Like all countries, the US will not part with its technology crown jewels for anyone, even its closest allies. Incidentally, according to Reuters, President Trump is getting set to announce a new policy to further boost the sales of US military equipment around the world, using American embassies to “become a sales force for defence contractors”.

In the mid-1990s, in a visit to the Pentagon, Commander Charley Dale explained to me the differing ways with which India and America approached the issue. They appeared to work on different algorithms. The Indians dem­anded technology from the US as proof of its friendship, while the Americans suggested that India prove the friendship before the US delivered on the technology.

We should not fetishise technology acquisition for its own sake. Exploiting  the advanced technology the US or anyone else may be willing to transfer makes sense only if India has an R&D and manufacturing base which is capable of absorbing it. Right now we do not, and neither are we showing signs that we have a plan to create one.

Politically, we are at a fortunate intersection where India’s interests largely coincide with the US, which will remain the dominant global power well into this century. We are also lucky that our needs coincide. There are, as we have indicated, important areas where our interests are not entirely congruent. The onus is on us to work out ways to bring the US around.

The Trump administration offers us a strategic opportunity on par with that of the junior George Bush. Trump is not burdened by history, nor restrained by bureaucracy, and seems favourably inc­lined to India. He wants to dista­nce himself from the Obama administration and his team has, in fact, picked up several formulations mooted by India, such as ‘Indo-Pacific’ and ‘leading power’. Indeed, even Rex Tillerson’s fulmination against China’s predatory economic behavior probably leads off from the Indian critique of the BRI.

There is one factor on which we need clearer thinking—time. Actually, the kind of relationship we need to foster is the one the Chinese developed in the period after 1972 when they used the US need to counter the Soviet Union to set themselves on to a trajectory which is taking them to a status of a true world power. But that process has taken the better part of a half-century.

Juster indirectly addressed this point when he said India should get over doubts about the durability of the India-US relationship. Reviewing his 17 years of experience, he said that “a strong foundation” had been laid and the time had now come to move beyond “our growing pains” and create a long-term relationship. In other words, we still have some way to go.

Whether the US can help us to become a great manufacturing power or a politico-military leading power, it can only happen in the span of the political lives of several prime ministers, and possibly political regimes. Hype and grandstanding are part of the process but, must alw­ays be subordinate to careful planning and a dash of modesty. The Americans can give us a leg up, but in the arduous path, there are no short cuts.

Outlook January 29, 2018

A strong India-US partnership is the best balancer to China’s growing power

In 2007, James Mann, a former Beijing correspondent for the Los Angeles Times penned a slim book titled “The China Fantasy” whose real punch lay in its subtitle: “Why capitalism will not bring democracy to China.”

At the time the book was dismissed as a “curious polemic” that went against the grain of the prevailing wisdom that over time, China would progressively liberalise and become a democracy, just as South Korea and Taiwan had. Successive administrations argued that the goal of American policy must be to “integrate China into the international community.” And a slew of specialists forecast the eventual democratic future of China.

Looking back at America’s China hallucination, you can speculate whether it was the Americans who deluded themselves or that they were cleverly played by the Chinese. As recently as 2012, Chinese leaders like its Premier Wen Jiabao spoke of the need for political reform and democracy. Often this was carefully tailored for global audiences such as, in one instance, a meeting of the World Economic Forum.

After 2017, that illusion is gone. As the Trump administration’s new national security strategy laments, “for decades, US policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post war international order would liberalise China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others.” The US suddenly realises that not only is China a competitor, but it could well be a principal threat to the American homeland and its global primacy.

America’s global hegemony is the sum total of its domination in various regions of the world like Europe, Middle East, or East Asia. Today when the Americans look at East Asia, they see a hugely enriched and militarily powerful China increasingly challenging them.

This is where India comes in, as a principal balancer of China in a region now termed the “Indo-Pacific”. China looms large in the western Pacific, even though the US remains the most powerful nation from the military point of view. But Japan, tainted by its past, even now finds it difficult to assume a larger role in the security of the region. Vietnam and Australia lack heft and are economically dependent on China.

By stretching the region to incorporate India and the Indian Ocean, China looks smaller. India’s economy may be a fifth of China’s and its military much weaker, but its size, location and potential make it a peer competitor of China. By mid-century, India’s economy could exceed that of the US and be second only to China. And you can be sure, this will be accompanied by the rise of Indian military capacity as well.

Because of its border dispute and the China-Pakistan relationship, New Delhi has never had any illusions about China. It has actively engaged Beijing, and made no bones that it sees it as an adversary. In recent years, as China surged economically and militarily, things have become a bit difficult. Beijing is now expanding its reach in South Asia. It has recently taken a 99-year lease of Hambantota Port that it had earlier built; this month, a coalition of pro-China Communist parties have swept the elections in Nepal and the Maldives has ratified an FTA with China. Chinese naval vessels, rare in the Indian Ocean a decade ago, are now deployed routinely. And last week, the visiting Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi blandly told India that China disapproves of the concept of spheres of influence.

Under its new strategy, the US promises that it “will help South Asian nations maintain their sovereignty as China increases its influence in the region.” It also says it will support India in its “leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region.” India needs the US, as much as the Americans need us.

The arrival of Xi Jinping as the most powerful political figure since Deng Xiaoping has changed things. Far from liberalizing, Xi is doubling down on the hold of the Communist Party on the country. Xi’s speech and in the recent 19th Party Congress was a profound rejection of western values, particularly liberal democracy. His idea of reform is the need to build an efficient authoritarian state which he offered as a model for other countries.

If the Pakistan experience is anything to go by, we must accept that it is uncommonly difficult for the US to get rid of its international fantasies. Even so, in word and deed till now, the Trump administration is sold on the Indian partnership. There is an opportunity here which can serve us well, if we relentlessly pursue the national interest and not get distracted by illusions, of which we have our own share.

Hindustan Times, January 12, 2018

Bibi Persuades Modi to Take Back Spike Deal & Here’s How it Helps

If the prime minister of India is your friend, you can do many things, even revive an arms deal that has recently been cancelled by his Ministry of Defence. Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has demonstrated this by persuading Modi to allow the recently cancelled Spike anti-tank missile deal to get back on track.

In this case, at least, “friend” Modi has taken the right decision. The deal for the fourth generation anti-tank missile Spike had been struck in 2014. India has a larger need for some 40,000 anti-tank missiles and the 8,000 or so Spike missiles would fill only part of its requirement but they are urgently needed

Why Spike is Ideal for Cross-Border Raids

It’s not clear which versions India wanted, but they appear to be a mix of the medium range (MR) and short-range (SR) versions of the missile light enough to be carried into battle by infantrymen and Special Forces for use against tanks and hardened enemy positions.

The missile is a tried and tested system, having been used by over 20 countries and seen action in Israel’s various regional wars since its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Two months ago, the Ministry of Defence had cancelled the $500 million deal which would have also seen it being produced in India through technology transfer. They had, instead, decided to back the DRDO which had claimed that it would develop a system based on its Nag NAMICA system within  four years.

The Spike has seen constant enhancement in its technology since the 1980s. The latest version of Spike SR has a missile that is 98 cm long. Its disposable control launch unit weighs 1.2 kg with battery, and the missile and launch tube together weigh 8.6 kg. The total weight of the system is just under 10 kg. According to Jane’s 360, there is no other missile which knocks out targets between 50 m and 1.5 km in this weight class currently in production.

Over the years the Israelis have refined the system which has ensured that the missile does not have a separate booster to push it out of the launch tube, the task being done by a single unified motor. The Imaging Infrared sensor locks on to the target day or night and it has a proprietary fixed seeker which has a wide angle of vision. The operator locks on to the target using the missile’s seeker, fires it and the missile finds its own way to the target.

As is evident, it is an ideal missile for the Special Forces to carry in cross-border raids.

DRDO’s Ability to Deliver Nag on Time is Dubious

The DRDO’s anti-tank missile Nag is a non-starter for this task. It is simply too big and heavy for a single soldier to carry. It weighs 42 kg and has a length of 1.9 metre, and therefore has to be mounted on a vehicle or helicopter.

A September 2017 report suggested that the DRDO would begin work on a portable Nag which would weigh around 14 kg. But a similar report had earlier suggested that DRDO was beginning work on this in 2015 as well. Clearly, as of now they have no product and as the reports suggest, they have now promised a “world class missile” in 2022.

The DRDO’s ability to deliver on time is highly suspect and the army faced the prospect of having no missiles for the foreseeable future to replace their obsolete systems.

Since the Spike would fit only part of the Army’s needs, the DRDO’s Nag can still find its place in the balance of the Army’s requirements for a missile that can be carried on infantry combat vehicles and the attack helicopters of the army. However, it’s not clear that the DRDO’s product would fit the bill unless it actually goes through the tests.

There have been  varying claims of the success of the two Nag NAMICA tests that had taken place in September 2017. While the DRDO claimed they were a great success, Indian Army said that the tests had only been partially successful and postponed the induction of the missile till further tests were conducted. If this was the case with a missile that has been nearly 30 years in development, it will be some time before the DRDO can come up with missile that can match the Spike.

Perhaps the DRDO can take a leaf out of its own book and do a joint venture with Israeli companies to produce an anti-tank missile. After trying in vain to develop world-class surface-to-air missiles, the DRDO tied up successfully with the Israelis to develop the medium and long-range surface to air missiles which will equip all three Indian services in the future.

The Quint January 19, 2018

The Trump policy on Iran

The Trump Administration’s decision, on Friday,  to continue waiving sanctions relating to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is good news for the world and India. However, and somewhat ominously, Trump said that this was the last waiver he would issue.  Which means in four months, we will confront the possibility of the deal collapsing and its attendant consequences.

In addition, the US issued  new sanctions against 14 Iranian officials and institutions relating to human rights, its ballistic missile programme and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). New sanctions have been issued against the head of Iran’s judiciary Sadegh Larijani  and a cyber warfare unit accused of internet censorship and this could further roil relations between Iran and the US.

It is no secret that Trump hates the Iran deal and had threatened to talk away from it, but since taking over as President, he has waived sanctions for the third time. By law, the US President is required to certify to its Congress every 90 days as to whether Iran is complying with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Agreement that it signed with six world powers to limit its nuclear programme. In October 2017, Trump refused to certify the agreement and is since been issuing waivers on the sanctions that he is mandated to impose.

Trump now wants to work with the European powers who were behind the deal and push for a follow on agreement which would impose new conditions on Teheran. Trump’s ideas are contained in amendments to the  Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA). This would mandate that Iran allow timely and sufficient inspection of all its sites by international inspectors, that Iran does not come close to getting nuclear weapons.

However, while UK may want to go with the US on this, Germany, France,  are not likely to follow and China and Russia most certainly not.

The Europeans have been categorical in opposing any efforts to re-write the deal. On Thursday, the Europeans made it clear that they support the JCPOA. In Brussels, Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief said that while there were concerns about Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and other activities in the Middle East, they could be dealt with as a separate issue. But this would require Chinese and Russian cooperation as well as that of the Iranians, something that looks unlikely.

That is why there has been a big debate within the US about the Presidential waiver. Some have argued that the recent political protests are an opportunity to further push Iran to the point where the people overthrow the mullah-led government. However, others say that pressure would actually do the opposite—generate support for the government. Whatever it is, the US is poorly equipped to handle the issue because so far the US has been looking at the issue through only a military perspective. But while the protests have convinced the President that the Iranian leadership must be punished, the Europeans believe that the deal should be preserved.  

The Americans realise that they lack significant diplomatic heft to push the Europeans, but their real problem is that they want to re-write the deal which was achieved through very tough negotiations.The JCPOA was worked out through a UN Security Council resolution with monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency which must certify that Iran is complying with its side of the deal which includes limiting its enrichment of uranium, reducing its heavy water stockpiles,  dismantling centrifuges, pouring cement over the core of the Arak reactor.  So far the IAEA which has got unprecedented access to the programme,  has certified that Iran is in compliance with its part of the deal.

From the outset there has been little trust between Iran and the US. So while Iran has continued ballistic missile testing, the US has continued its sanctions through using the issue of  human rights and terrorism and many international companies have stayed away from Iran so as not to get entangled in US laws.

Trump’s policy has two pillars—the dismantling of a deal worked out by his predecessor Barack Obama which has been criticized by Israel as well. And containing Iranian activism in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The American policy is strongly influenced by the military men in his administration, people like the National Security Adviser H R McMaster who commanded American forces in Iraq.

Supporters of the deal say that it had a single focus—prevent Iran from going nuclear. Other issues such as ballistic missiles, Iranian activities in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq were not part of the arrangement. Those who thought that the deal alone would transform Iranian behaviour towards the US and its allies were unduly optimistic.

A breakdown of the deal and tension in the Persian Gulf has implications for India which imports significant quantities of Iranian oil and is also committed to building the Chah Bahar project.

Greater Kashmir January 15, 2018