India-Iran diplomatic games intriguing

Jaishankar’s Tehran visit was a signal to the US, too

In a year of continuing global uncertainties, India is out to rediscover old friends. The timing of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's visit to Tehran, when Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have heated up crucial shipping lanes in the Red Sea as well as around it with missile attacks, ostensibly to avenge Israel's brutal retaliation against Palestinians, is significant. The visit to Tehran came days after his five-day sojourn in Moscow to make nice with Russia. India's ties with Iran have been strained for a while because of Delhi's proximity to the US and Israel. In 2018, Delhi stopped buying oil from Iran in deference to US sanctions reimposed after former President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. One of the unfortunate consequences of the sanctions has been India going slow on the Chabahar Port project. Indeed, there seems to be a belief in Delhi that this connectivity project that envisaged bypassing Pakistan to Afghanistan and Central Asia has been rendered irrelevant by the new India-Middle East-Europe Corridor plan. In response to the sanctions, Iran signed a long-term partnership with China that will purportedly see Beijing invest billions of dollars in connectivity and infrastructure in Iran. Jaishankar's visit comes after Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra went in November, apparently to assure the Iranians that Delhi had not lost interest in Chabahar. At this point, with Indian ships also targeted by the Houthis, it was important to signal to Tehran that Delhi remains a friend, but if the targeting continues, Delhi might have to take steps in self-defence. He may have also had to sanitise Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's pledge to home audiences that India would go after “whoever did this” and find them “even from the depths of the sea”. 

The differences between Iran and India on the conflict, who started it and who should end it, were evident during the visit. While Jaishankar underlined Delhi's position on Israel's war in Gaza, India’s support for dialogue, diplomacy, and a two-State solution, plus the need to avoid civilian casualties, in his meetings with President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, his Iranian interlocutors were clear that the Israeli “Zionist regime” was committing war crimes. President Raisi also asked India to play a role in “ending the bombings, lifting the blockade of this region, and realising the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Despite the differences, India is clearly trying hard to make an effective outreach, even putting aside its distaste for particular chapters of Indian history to do this. Jaishankar reached deep into India's storied Persian connection to pull out the surprise announcement that Farsi would be included as one of India's classical languages, this at a time when it is doing its best to marginalise Urdu, a language with Persian roots. More immediately, India is set to host “in the coming days” the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a member of the US-designated Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Ahmadian is also a sanctioned individual. The Biden administration will be watching closely, and that might be the whole point of the exercise.