Geopolitical Analysis

By the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University: The Left and the opposition in the parliament have criticised the UPA government for voting against Iran in the recently held IAEA meeting. They have called it the reversal of India’s non-alignment policy. This was also the argument, which the Iranian government tried to sell to India on the eve of the voting.

The Left’s castigating of India for a vote against Iran is more an _expression of anti-Americanism than a demonstration of a semblance of solidarity with Iran. Likewise, NDA’s opposition is precisely a replication of what the Congress had been doing when it was in power.

It is time that the whole issue is analysed and understood in its proper perspective. In the first place, the government has explained that it was not a vote for taking the issue to the security council but for sending it back to the IAEA so that Iran gets more time to reconsider her stand on a very delicate and confrontational issue. As a mature nation, India has tried to avert a situation that we are faced with in Iraq today.

At the same time, India has also advised Iran that notwithstanding her right to develop nuclear capability, she should show more flexibility that sends a message across the board that Iran would not subscribe to proliferation of nuclear arsenal. This is a good friend advising a good friend. The question of India succumbing to the American or European pressure does not arise.

I am one who never accepted the postulation that Iran had developed special friendly relations with India. International relations are more a matter of interests and convenient adjustments. But even in that sense, Iran showed nothing that would prove good friendship towards India or supporting India’s interests.

During the entire decade and a half of armed insurgency and terror in Kashmir, Iran never said a word against these elements, leave aside condemning their crimes of pogroms and carnages either against the religious minorities or the innocent people of Kashmir. As a Muslim state or as a “good friend of India”, Iran should have searched her conscience and spoken against these carnages.

After the formation of OIC, Pakistan very actively took up the case of Kashmir issue with the OIC at all available levels. It maneuvered to create observer status for the opposition group in Kashmir, namely APHC. Iran never opposed the move and never said that giving observer status to a group of political dissidents was illegal and contrary to the norms of international code of conduct. If Iran considers it her right to allow a political dissident group a formal position in an international organization, then India should also have the right to speak for the Mujahideen Khalq on international platforms.

Not only that, Iran has always voted against India on Kashmir issue whenever such a resolution is moved in the OIC. She has always been voting against India on all resolutions that focus on criticizing India for so-called human rights violations in Kashmir. Iran never spoke of the violations of human rights of the minority community in Kashmir, of the rights of the people who voted in national interests and so forth and so on.

It will be noted that while sectarian violence continues unabated in Pakistan and the Shia’s – whose interests Iran claims to be safeguarding – are at the receiving end, Iran never raised the issue either in the OIC or at the UN or at the Human Rights Commission. As against this Iran has often raised her voice against imaginary and unsubstantiated human rights violations in the Indian part of Kashmir.

Why does Iran maintain silence over the sectarian killings in Iran? It is so because Pakistan has been clandestinely supplying nuclear technology to Teheran. When the matter came to a crisis point, the Pakistani government made A.Q. Khan the scapegoat and absolved itself of responsibilities. But of late the Pakistan-Iran nuclear proliferation matter has lost its secrecy and the facts are now revealed to the world including the IAEA.

Iran never consulted New Delhi nor took her into confidence over the clandestine acquiring of nuclear technology from Pakistan. It remained a guarded secret between the two countries since 1989 and has been unraveled only now when the international community focused its attention on what Iran was doing with the stuff.

It is very amusing to hear Iran’s threat of proliferating nuclear secrets and technology to the Islamic countries. In doing so Iran has made a forthright confession of her intention of proliferating the weapon of mass destruction. This precisely is the crux of the matter. When Khumeini’s revolution succeeded in Iran in 1979, the much-publicized agenda of the regime of the Ayatollah’s was to wrest al-Qods (Jerusalem) from the hands of the Jews. This commitment has been repeated time and again, and the open support to Hizbollah terrorist organization is an indication how Iran wants to translate the words into action. Therefore if Israel takes note of the fact that Iran has developed nuclear capability, she has every right to forestall the threat emanating thereof. And how she will do that is a matter on which she alone can decide, of course, with the consultation and perhaps support of her friends.

As against these moves and antics of Iran that undoubtedly count towards the detriment of India, New Delhi has never adopted retaliatory attitude on diplomatic plane. It is India’s large heartedness that she continued to treat Iran as a friend. Even now with the vote that she cast, India has, in reality, tried to avert the confrontational course between the US and the EU on one hand and Iran on the other. It will be reminded that India had also advised Saddam Hussein to be more flexible in regard to the situation that had developed immediately before the US attack on Iraq. Not only that, in 1979, India had also silently tired to dissuade Brezhnev, the then President of the Soviet Union, from sending troops into Afghanistan. Iran should use the good offices of India in seeking a break-through in the stalemate. It is no use speculating India abandoning the non-alignment policy and falling into the lap of the US, as the Left in New Delhi is disposed to contend. India’s primary concern is regional and global peace and eradicating the threat of religion-based terror that is stalking the region and the world. Iran is wise enough to understand the disastrous and fatal consequences of proliferation of the WMD to fanatical and irresponsible recipients.