Jaishankar delivers Modi’s ‘personal message’ to Raisi, as India moves to reach out to Iranian President-elect

External Affairs Minister meets Iranian Foreign Minister during stopover in Tehran on way to Moscow, discusses situation in Afghanistan

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday visited Tehran and called on Iran’s former Chief Justice, Ebrahim Raisi, who would take over as the West Asian nation’s new President next month.

Jaishankar was the first foreign dignitary to visit Tehran and call on Raisi after he recently won the presidential elections in Iran. The External Affairs Minister handed over to the Iranian President-elect a “personal message” from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

New Delhi moved fast to signal its intent to engage with Raisi’s government in Tehran and arrest the slide in India-Iran relations.

“Appreciate his (Raisi’s) warm sentiments for India. Deeply value his strong commitment to strengthen our bilateral ties and expand cooperation on regional and global issues,” tweeted Jaishankar, who had a stopover in Tehran while flying from New Delhi to Moscow.

New Delhi’s relations with Tehran came under stress over the past one-and-a-half decades as the US sanctions on Iran often forced India to curtail trade and economic links with the Persian Gulf nation.

But the prospects of President Joe Biden’s administration recommitting to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran already prompted New Delhi to signal that it would restart importing crude oil from Iran and return to investing in infrastructure and hydrocarbon projects as and when the US would lift or ease sanctions on the West Asian nation.

New Delhi is also keen to move fast to arrest the slide in its ties with Tehran, as it is worried over the proposed deal Iran is planning to sign with China securing a whopping $ 400 billion investment pledge by communist country in its infrastructure and energy sectors over the next 25 years. What also sent alarm bells ringing in New Delhi is Iran’s purported move to invite China and Pakistan to take part in development of its Chabahar Port. Beijing and Tehran are learnt to have discussed a proposal to link the Chabahar Port with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor – a flagship component of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative and a project opposed by India.

“I am sure this visit (by External Affairs Minister of India) will be the basic basis for Iran-India relations during the presidency of Ayatollah Raisi,” tweeted Seyyed Rasoul Mousavi, the Director General of the West Asia Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Iranian Government.

Jaishankar on Wednesday also had a meeting with Javad Zarif, the foreign minister of the outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government.

The External Affairs Minister later tweeted that he and his counterpart in the Iranian Government had a useful discussion on “regional and global affairs”.

A source in New Delhi said that Jaishankar and Zarif exchanged views on the situation in Afghanistan, where the United States already withdrew more than 90% of its troops and a resurgent Taliban had occupied almost one-third of the total 421 districts even while pursuing negotiations with the government led by President Ashraf Ghani.

The situation in Afghanistan is likely to dominate the agenda even when Jaishankar will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday.

India already advised its citizens in Afghanistan to exercise utmost vigilance and caution with regard to security at the workplace, place of residence and also during movement to their places of work.

The Embassy of India in Kabul is also preparing a contingency plan to evacuate citizens from Afghanistan, if the security situation worsens and the conflict-ravaged country again plunges into a civil war.

New Delhi is worried about the possibility of Pakistan taking advantage of the situation to gain its much-cherished “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and use it against India.

Jaishankar visited Tehran on a day the Government of Iran hosted representatives of both the Afghan Government and the Taliban for talks in the capital of the West Asian nation.

The External Affairs Minister last month had stopovers in Doha while travelling to and returning from Kenya. The Taliban has a political office in Doha. The Qatari Government has been facilitating talks between the Taliban and the US as well as between the Taliban and the Afghan Government.

Jaishankar had a meeting with US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, during one of his stopovers in Doha to discuss the progress of the talks with the Taliban. New Delhi, however, later dismissed the social media reports about the External Affairs Minister’s meeting with the leaders of the Taliban as “completely false, baseless and mischievous”.

But the Government of India refrained from confirming or denying speculation about meetings its diplomats and security officials purportedly held with the leaders of the Taliban.

Qatar’s special envoy for counterterrorism and mediation of conflict resolution Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, however, recently said during a webinar that a delegation of the Government of India had of late quietly visited Doha and had a meeting with the representatives of Taliban.