By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
29/04/08 "Asia Times" -- -This week, with his three-nation tour of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad will fortify Iran's regional ties and thus achieve a milestone in his administration's "Look East" foreign policy orientation.
Accompanied by a high-ranking delegation, Ahmadinejad's trip transpires at a time of heightened US allegations of Iran's meddling in Iraq and serves as an antidote to the US policy of isolating Iran and castigating it as a rogue or pariah state.
Too bad for the US, which now places the lion's share of the blame for its quagmire in Iraq on Iran's "destructive influence", two key US allies in the sub-continent, India and Pakistan, are now poised to deepen their economic, political, cultural and even
geostrategic
relations with
the Islamic
Republic of
Iran,
irrespective of
Tehran's
defiance of
United Nations
Security Council
resolutions
calling for a
halt in Iran's
uranium-enrichment
activities.
Not only that,
Sri Lanka,
strategically
situated in the
Indian Ocean, is
also about to
enter into a
close economic
relationship
with Iran, in
light of
Tehran's funding
of the US$450
million
multi-purpose
Uma Oya power
project and its
billion-dollar
investment in
Sri Lanka's sole
oil refinery
[1]. This is
bound to enhance
Iran's regional
clout as well as
create new
points of
geostrategic
synergy between
Tehran and New
Delhi.
After all, India
"sees Sri Lanka
as a sentinel of
its security
astride the
Indian Ocean",
to quote a
recent study on
India-Sri Lanka
relations, and
Iran's strong
presence in Sri
Lanka has
definite
implications in
the broader
strategic
context. In
addition to
power and
energy, Iran
looks to expand
its ties with
Sri Lanka by
expanding
tourism,
educational
assistance, an
employee
exchange
program,
supplying
vessels for Sri
Lanka's shipping
industry, among
others.
As part of
Iran's "Look
East" (negahe
be shargh)
policy steered
by a Foreign
Minister
Manouchehr
Mottaki [2] who,
compared to his
Western-educated
predecessors,
received his
education in
(Bangalore)
India, the new
chapter in
Iran-Sri Lanka
relations has
been conceived
in Tehran
principally as a
reaction to the
regime of
sanctions and
limitations
imposed by the
West.
Ahmadinejad's
"Look East"
strategy, taking
a page or two
from India's own
eastern strategy
of the 1970s
through the
1990s, pins its
hopes on
building win-win
bilateral and
multilateral
relations and
cooperation in
the economic,
political and
cultural spheres
with the
non-Western
world. This is
basically a
subset of an
ambitious global
strategy that
prioritizes ties
with various
countries, for
example in Asia,
Africa, Central
and Latin
America, that
are visibly
anti-America,
such as Cuba,
Nicaragua and
Venezuela.
Others, such as
India and
Pakistan, are
considered
strategic allies
of Iran's chief
nemesis, the US.
Yet as these two
countries forge
closer
connections with
Iran based on
their pressing
national
interests, above
all energy
security, they
are forced into
a delicate
balancing act
with respect to
their burgeoning
US ties, that
may suffer due
to US backlashes
against their
willingness to
defy
Washington's
will on
isolating Iran.
But, with their
Iran diplomacy
serving as a
litmus test of
their
independence,
both Pakistan
and India have
mirrored each
other by
standing up to
the US's
pressure: this
is micro-focused
on the
Iran-Pakistan-India
(IPI)"peace"
pipeline - a
$7.6 billion gas
pipeline planned
to run from Iran
through Pakistan
and on to India.
After years of
wrangling, an
agreement might
soon be signed.
Recently, at a
lecture at
Harvard
University in
the US, Nicholas
Burns, the
outgoing US
under secretary
of state for
political
affairs, cited
as one of his
accomplishments
the US's ability
to convince
India to stay
away from the
IPI project
that, in the
words of his
boss, Secretary
of State
Condoleezza
Rice, at her
testimony before
the US Senate in
2006, is in
conflict with
"the US laws".
This in light of
an Iran
sanctions act
that penalizes
foreign
corporations or
governments that
invest more than
$20 million in
Iran's energy
sector.
But, with the
IPI likely to be
finalized in the
coming weeks, if
not days, and
with China and
other players
keen to
participate in
the
international
bidding for
various aspects
of this massive
project, the US
faces a triple
jeopardy. These
are:
However, despite India's explicit turnaround on the IPI after a temporary bout of cold feet, reflected in last week's successful meeting of India's and Pakistan's oil ministers in Islamabad, Washington has not altogether given up hope the Iran-benefiting project will be scuttled at the last minute, or at least postponed further, just as it has been during the past 15 years. (Last week, India and Iran hammered out their main differences, which related to the transit fee to be charged by Pakistan for the Iranian gas going to India.)
On the eve of Ahmadinejad's state visit to Pakistan, where he is scheduled to sign a gas sales purchase agreement, news from Pakistan that a Baloch rebel group, the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), has blown up a gas pipeline disrupting supplies to various Punjab districts highlights the security problems of the IPI project that traverses 700 kilometers of Pakistani territory, including volatile Balochistan province.
Given the demands of the BRA for royalties for the region's gas supplies and job-creation for ethnic Balochis, Islamabad could conceivably offset threats to the IPI by pledging to use the project precisely for the economic revival of Balochistan.
An editorial in the Pakistan daily, the Nation, noted that the IPI will "usher in a new economic era" both internally and also externally by "adding new dimensions to Pakistan-India relations", in the words of Pakistani Petroleum Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.
Pakistan will need foreign investment and support to cover the costs of constructing the pipeline going through its territory and expects institutions such as the World Bank, which has done a feasibility study on the project and has come out in favor of it, to provide financial assistance. [3] Yet, the US, which wields enormous clout in the World Bank, may play the spoiler by blocking such assistance, in which case it will earn itself the ire of Pakistan's newly-elected government, as well as India, which needs to upgrade its infrastructure to realize its dream of addressing its energy crunch through the IPI pipeline.
Ahmadinejad's "whistle-stop" tour in India, to echo a headline in the Hindustan Times, will be the shortest leg of his three-day South Asia tour, yet it has the deepest diplomatic and symbolic significance, coinciding with a week-long festival of Iranian culture in India that serves to highlight the historical ties between the countries.
According to the Iranian news agency IRNA, Ahmadinejad's visit will deepen ties and in his discussions with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Indian President Pratibha Patil, "discussions are set to cover a number of sectors from energy, the slow moving Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project to bilateral investment to civilian nuclear energy".
The Indian media, on the other hand, have reported that last week Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee sent a letter to Tehran asserting that India "pursues an independent foreign policy", thus assuring Tehran that Delhi's recent "standing up to Uncle Sam" with respect to Iran is not a one-off, but rather a manifestation of India's "foreign policy realism".
Concerning the latter, Indian National Security Advisor M K Narayanan recently told a conference in New Delhi that India did not want to be part of a "compact" dealing with Iran's nuclear issue, that India felt it was "better placed" to deal with Iran than many other countries, partly because "we have the second-largest Shi'ite population, so it's not only a foreign-policy issue, but a domestic issue".
There is a great deal on the India-Iran plate nowadays, and Narayanan made a point of revealing that "a great deal is taking place between India and Iran which is not on the public realm".
Notes
1. According to Sri Lanka's official reports, Iran "would cover 70% of the required investment for the refinery's expansion, in the form of a 10-year loan, with a five-year exemption". Iran is expected to yield noticeable benefits from its investment, barring unforeseen developments, such as sabotage and further instability in Sri Lanka from attacks by Tamil separatists.
2. For more, see the author's interview with Mottaki in www.thepeoplesvoice.org, September 27, 2006, Saving the Peace Pipeline, www.agenceglobal.com, August 17, 2007.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd.
