India faces lose-lose predicament in Iran crisis

Indian diplomats are a harried lot these days. On the one hand, they are under immense pressure from the US and Europe to comply with the sanctions they’ve imposed on Iran, ostensibly to induce it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. And the language of diplomacy is turning blunt by the day. On the other, for all of India’s efforts to take the diplomatic heat and continue to trade with Iran, it has little or no influence over what any of the central players — Iran, Israel and the US — will do to either retrieve the situation or push it into war. In every way, India faces a diplomatic minefield from which it cannot emerge without damage to its interests or its dignity. The warmongering against Iran has already begun in the US in all its shamelessness. Salon writer Glenn Greenwald reports on a recent ‘war-room briefing’ that a retired four-star US General gave, at which the Pentagon propagandist predicted an outbreak of war with Iran within the next 90 days. ( Watch his shrill PowerPoint presentation here.) In much the same way that the US media built up the case for and amplified Pentagon war propaganda ahead of the 2003 war with Iraq, sections of the US media are again complicit in advancing the militarist agenda against Iran, willfully ignoring the fact that some of these warmongering ex-Generals themselves personally profit from war given their association with military contractors. [caption id=“attachment_230775” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“India can emerge from this crisis with only one of the two — its dignity or its strategic interests — intact. And there’s a fair chance it can lose both. John Kolesidis/Reuters”]  [/caption] It’s not that the Obama administration is itching to go to war; if anything, Obama appears earnest about winding down the wars that George W Bush blundered into. But he is virtually being blackmailed by Israel to tighten the sanctions regime against Iran — or stand back and allow Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. And the warmongers in the Pentagon and in the defence industry are only too happy to fan the flames. Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit Washington next week, is looking to make the most of the window of opportunity it has before the US Presidential elections in November to extract as much leverage as it can from Obama. Republican candidates in the race for the party’s presidential nomination have (except for Ron Paul) typically gone over the top with their testosterone-driven “bomb Iran now” chants, which enjoy surprisingly high resonance among the war-hungry Republican constituency. All this has put enormous pressure on Obama to make the sanctions against Iran bite as the only way to hold back its Prodigal Ally Israel from launching its strikes on Iranian facilities. And since he can’t seen to be too harsh on Israel without alienating the politically well-entrenched Israeli lobby in the US, and without being seen as a “pussy”, Obama is channelling that pressure against India and others who continue to trade with Iran, and thus far have remained resolute about protecting their commercial and strategic interest. India, for instance, is now pushing ahead with its efforts to get Iran to open up its land routes to access countries in Central Asia and the Caucases, from whom India intends to source minerals and oil. But American patience is running low. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the US was having “ very intense and very blunt ” conversations with India — and also China and Turkey — to get them to reduce their dependence on Iranian oil. Other interlocutors have been rather more harsh. Former US Ambassador Nicholas Burns, who recently held forth on India’s “ strategic importance to the US”, now says that India’s stand on Iran is “bitterly disappointing news” for those like him who have championed a close relationship. Such a stand, he notes, “raises questions about (India’s) ability to lead” as a global power. Burns also suggested, without saying so explicitly, that continued Indian reluctance to get in step with “the new global determination to isolate and pressure Iran to negotiate” would impede India’s aspirations to secure a permanent seat on the UN Security Council that it covets. But the irony is that India doesn’t have any effective leverage over Iran precisely because, unlike China, it doesn’t have a seat – and a veto – at the high table of global governance. It isn’t just a sense of solidarity that compels to source its oil predominantly from Iran. Although India’s excessive dependence on Iranian crude is being gradually whittled down, India cannot switch to alternative sources of oil overnight, given that Indian refineries are geared for Iranian crude — and to switch to supplies from, say, Saudi Arabia will require investments to alter the refining designs. But the bottomline consideration is that an oil embargo on Iran is fated to fail. The international oil market, notes this Chatham House Report, is too complex, with too many players and too many options, to disguise transactions. History, it adds, is littered with failed oil embargoes. Even full-scale sanctions on financial transactions  are full of loopholes, but at least it may succeed in channelling popular disenchantment with the Iranian regime. Any which way history pivots, Indian diplomacy is left with stern choices: it can emerge from this crisis with only one of the two — its dignity or its strategic interests — intact. And there’s a fair chance it can lose both.