India may face US heat, but not sanctions on Iran

New York: India has managed to keep a neutral stand in the bitter standoff between the West and Iran. This has annoyed the US and Israel no end, but India may still be exempted from US sanctions, according to Indian government officials. The US will decide by the end of June whether to impose sanctions on 12 countries, unless they significantly cut purchases of Iranian oil, said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland. China and India, the top two importers of Iran’s crude oil and South Korea, the fourth-largest buyer are all on the list. Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy said last week that India will continue to import crude oil from Iran so long as doing so will not break international laws. However, the Hindustan Times  cited unidentified government officials saying India may be exempted from US sanctions because of its plans to reduce Iranian oil imports by as much as 20 percent. “While the government is publically maintaining that it does not support the US sanctions against Iran and that it will not seek any waiver to the US measures, it has quietly issued informal diktats to state-owned oil refining firms to undertake cuts in oil imports from Iran and diversify the oil importing sources,” reported Hindustan Times.  [caption id=“attachment_259029” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“India’s friendship with Iran could cause trouble with the US. Reuters”]  [/caption] The Obama administration recently exempted 10 European Union countries and Japan from US economic sanctions while crediting them with “significantly reducing” their purchases of petroleum from Iran. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton granted waivers to Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Japan, meaning that banks and other financial institutions based there will not be hit with penalties under US law for a renewable period of 180 days. Now India, China, South Korea and the rest of the 12 countries have until 28 June to take similar steps or face sanctions. “Both India and China are now understood to be treading a smart diplomatic path and are working on slashing imports from Iran by 15-20 percent,” the government official told Hindustan Times. Trita Parsi, the founder and president of the Washington-based National Iranian Council, told The Wall Street Journal that it seems unlikely that the US is willing to risk a conflict with India over this issue. “India is such an important country that it has become difficult for the United States to increase its pressure on India too much,” Parsi told The Wall Street Journal. “Obviously there will be some increased pressure but the question is how far the West can go on this issue. I’ve heard that the US will now tell India that they view the relationship with Iran as “offensive” which is a step higher than how it has been viewed in the past,” added Parsi. The Indian government feels it is completely unfair for the West and the US in particular, to put India in a position where it has to choose one friend over another. “India’s relationship with Iran is neither inconsistent with non-proliferation objectives, nor do we seek to contradict the relationships we have with our friends in West Asia or with the US and Europe,” the Indian Embassy in Washington finally said in exasperation this month, while blasting the US media for projecting a “distorted picture of New Delhi’s foreign policy objectives and energy security needs” by using data selectively about its imports from Iran. The embassy took the unusual step of speaking out on Iran as it wanted to counter the lopsided stories put out by the US media suggesting India had stepped up its oil imports from Iran despite its close ties with US and Israel. The embassy stated that people tend to gloss over India’s dependence on oil imports from Iran because it serves the “energy needs” of over 400 million Indians who don’t yet have access to commercial energy. “Given the imperative of meeting the energy needs of millions of Indians, an automatic replacement of all Iranian oil imports, is not a simple matter of selection, or a realistic option,” said the Indian embassy. US State Department spokesperson Nuland stressed that arriving at sanctions was a “dynamic process” and countries on the watch list could be “added, or dropped” as additional information becomes available.” “Some of India’s resistance is that it simply refuses to yield into such a pressure that perhaps smaller countries can succumb to, but for a rising power like India, it would be a bit embarrassing,” said Parsi.