Geopolitical Analysis

By K.N. Pandita

Ambassador Nabizadeh says India’s testing of spy satellite TECSAR on 21 January in Andhra Pradesh has caused embarrassment to Teheran.

TECSAR is Israel’s spy satellite meant to keep an eye on nuclear activities of Iran. It is powerful enough to detect objects even when passing through clouds.

Teheran has never made a secret of her bellicosity towards Israel. At the peak of his power, Ayatollah Khumeini publicly declared that the road to Qods (Jerusalem) lay through Israel. He never rejected force as means of achieving that goal.

Khumeini’s successors in the hierarchy of hardliners, including the supreme religious leader Khamenei, have been towing his line. Holding out threats of attack and destruction or intimidating a sovereign state on political, economic or religious grounds is violation of the UN Charter. Iran is a signatory to the Charter.

Ever since the Islamic revolution, Iran has assumed confrontational posture in the region by arming Hamas and training its activists. It has brought fighting and instability closer to the doors of Israel.

A sovereign country when handed out serious open threats to its existence by an adversary would naturally take steps to beef up its security and solidarity. Unfortunately, Iran has promoted weapon race in the Middle East besides jeopardizing peace prospect, which international community wants to carry forward.

During Iran-Iraq war that erupted soon after Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Israel played a significant role in providing much – needed portable military hardware to Iran via Pakistan to fight Iraq. At that time Saddam posed much more serious threat to Israel.

With the liquidation of the Bathist regime and Saddam in Iraq, Iran has intensified her anti-Israel animus to the extent that Iranian President Ahmadinejad thinks the World War II holocaust was only a fabricated episode. Teheran wants to assume the frontline role against Israel in the wake of vacuum caused by the disintegration of Iraq and destruction of Saddam. This is to satisfy her ego of assuming leading role in the Muslim world as the frontline Muslim state challenging the existence of Israel. Iran always had a problem of identity as a Muslim state.

The history of Iran immediately following the rise of Ayatolha Khumeini shows that she has been trying to be over-assertive in international relations. Her strained relations with the US have caused her the dilemma of how to behave with countries especially Asiatic ones that have good or normal relations with the US. India is one such country but at the same time more important than many other countries.

India has always been conscious of her age-old cultural relations with Iran. New Delhi has usually tried not to do anything that might cause unhappiness to Iran. But in regard to Kashmir issue, Iran has fallen short of demonstrating neutrality leave aside pro-India stance. Teheran never hesitated to be a willing signatory to anti-India resolutions on Kashmir in the OIC usually tabled by Pakistan.

We know where her grouse against India lies. India had declined to provide her with nuclear know-how. It was Pakistan’s Qadeer Khan who was authorised by Islamabad to clandestinely carry the blue prints to Teheran.

Unluckily, Teheran failed to recognise broad contours of India’s principled foreign policy: it failed to comprehend the seriousness of India’s security concerns in trans-Himalayan region. Moreover, New Delhi had no reason whatsoever to be part of political manoeuvring that endangered peace and stability in the Middle East. India could not go against the established norms of international behaviour in order to oblige a friendly country to help her achieve dangerous ambitions.

India’s good relations with Israel are not something against Iran or the Muslim world. It is her patent foreign policy to widen the circle of her friendly countries. That is true of all sovereign states. Are not many Muslim countries having cordial relations with Israel? Iran has never expressed her embarrassment over that harsh reality.

It is only a figment of imagination to say that India is not agreeing to be a party to Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline because of pressure from Washington. The fact is that much before Washington expressed its concern on tripartite gas deal, New Delhi had in no ambiguous terms expressed its doubts of Pakistan standing fast by her promise of providing necessary security to the proposed gas pipeline. Moreover, New Delhi is apprehensive that Pakistan may end up as a failed state. Ethnic divide is a potent threat to her territorial integrity. This poses serious threat to the proposed IPI gas pipeline. Unless these doubts are removed India has reservations in becoming a party to the deal.

And finally, terrorist threat to India’s security and territorial integrity emanates from the region in her immediate neighbourhood. Iran never came out with open condemnation of terrorist activities in India and the region. It has been playing seek and hide game. Terrorist organizations in the neighbourhood spitting fire of communal hatred and frenzy against India day in and day out have pushed India to seek cooperation of friends who do understand the implications of these threats to her sovereignty sovereignty. Iran could have played a vital role in minimising the terrorist menace but she chose not to play.

Some leftist groups in India have been keeping Teheran in good humour. For what reasons, we do not know but we know that there is absolutely no ideological comparability between the mullah regime in Teheran and Marxists in India. Iran has no justification to give expression to any displeasure, formally or informally over India testing the spy satellite.

(The writer is the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies at Kashmir University).