P-5 – The Wire

Three to Tango: With the US Looming Large, India-Iran Ties Over the Years

Despite years of a personalised relationship with India, Iran seems to have decided to take the bull by the horns perhaps after a cost-benefit analysis.

Post-US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, India-Iran relations always had – as Princess Diana once famously said about her marriage, “Three of us in it”; the third being the US.

Prior to that, strategic convergence between India and Iran grew from the mid-1990s, driven by common objectives in Afghanistan and the shared threat from Taliban and its sponsor Pakistan. This was exacerbated after the capture of Kabul by Taliban in 1996 when only the Northern Alliance stood in its way of overrunning all of Afghanistan.

In 2001, then prime minister A.B. Vajpayee visited Teheran and was hosted by reformist and then ascendant Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The resulting Teheran Declaration reflected the growing engagement.

The Iranian president returned the visit in 2003 and was the chief guest at Republic Day. But by then, the Taliban had been deposed by the US and had found sanctuaries in Pakistan. US troops already controlled Afghanistan and would attack Iraq two months later.

From mid-2003, when the clandestine enrichment programme of Iran was revealed – including links to rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan – India-Iran relations began to sputter. Iran was being pilloried for its nuclear programme, for what it thought were activities allowed to it as signatory of the Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). India, on the other hand, as a non-signatory was, according to Iraq, unfairly negotiating a nuclear deal with the US.

Also read: Iran Foreign Minister Calls on India to ‘Not Let Senseless Thuggery Prevail’

The US had begun to interpose in India-Iran relations, and this still persists. From 2003 onwards, India-Iran bilateral relations began to feel the impact. The US pressured India to vote with them and against Iran at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), curtail trade and oil purchases from Iran and comply with US sanctions.

India maintained it would only comply with UN sanctions and not additional ones mandated by US laws. Iran turned its attention westwards and with patience and shrewdness through proxies it ensnared US militarily in a sectarianism and terrorism fed civil war in Iraq. From this militant brew arose the first al-Qaeda clone under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and then the ISIS hybrid under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

While president George W. Bush managed to push back and stabilise Iraq enough to get notional democratic processes going, his successor President Barack Obama first dithered and then chose to completely alter US approach to the region.

He calculated that the suddenly emergent ISIS, which created an Islamic Caliphate literally overnight across large swathes of territory in northern Iraq and Syria, could either be controlled by a third US war – for which US was unprepared – or the co-option of Iran.

He chose the latter and that led to the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran by P-5 and Germany.

With this entente with the Western nations, Iran began to slowly assert influence and then control via proxies all across West Asia, running through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. While India-Iran relations regained some normalcy, the old warmth was missing as both nations had different strategic priorities. While Iran’s Quds Force, led by late major general Qasem Soleimani, shored up the beleaguered Syrian government of Bashar al Assad, with the Russians jumping in to provide air cover, the Hezbollah and Kurds pitched in with ground forces.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shakes hands with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a photo opportunity ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, February 17, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after assuming power in 2014, began a personal outreach to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Even though these two nations were in open conflict with Iran in Yemen and via their surrogates in Syria India-Iran relations were insulated from it. This changed with the arrival of President Donald Trump in 2016. He reversed the Obama outreach to Iran, aligned openly with Saudi-Emirati alliance, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and literally armed the sanctions against Iran.

Also read: Policy Paralysis Cannot Be India’s Response to the US–Iran Impasse

Trump personalised his diplomacy to an extent that he broke past conventions by openly interfering in the elections of leaders he found likeable. He shifted the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation on the eve of Israeli elections to give a boost to beleaguered prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He repeatedly urged the British to go for Brexit and even support Boris Johnson against the incumbent Conservative prime minister of his own party. In India, he played a critical role, as his own tweet claimed, in getting a quick resolution to the Pulwama-Balakot near-war Indo-Pakistan confrontation, which an election-bound PM Modi fully used to his benefit.

Inherent in this was the likelihood that countries opposed to the US-Saudi-Emirati alliance in the region would start viewing India as partisan. This danger was enhanced by Modi government, after being swept into power again in 2019, by front-loading their ideological and sectarian agenda. Starting with amendments to Article 370 to Triple Talaq Bill and eventually the Citizenship Amendment Act, there was breathless pursuit of a to-do list of things, like all parties, in their election manifesto which are normally implementable after consensus building.

Even the BJP has been taken by surprise by the lack of electoral benefit from this agenda in a series of state elections, which they either lost or barely scraped through. Even more so, they fail to understand the damage it is doing to Indian image abroad and relations particularly with the Islamic nations.

Verbal spats with Turkey, Malaysia and even Indonesia were followed by Iran very strongly reminding India of its constitutional duties. Despite India remonstrating with the Iranian ambassador, Iran upped the ante with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who only intervenes in public when Iran is prepared for confrontation, urging India to “confront extremist Hindus & their parties & stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam”.

Also read: India Summons Iranian Envoy Over Comments by Foreign Minister on Delhi Violence

Iran seems to have decided to take the bull by the horns perhaps after cost-benefit analysis. India having largely succumbed to US sanctions, something India resisted since 2003 as India only recognised UN sanctions, there is little relief Iran perceives coming from India through trade and investment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s highly personalised dalliance with the Saudi and Abu Dhabi crown princes and now with Trump at Motera stadium has been read as India siding with Iranian antagonists with visible enthusiasm. Iran calculates that India needs them more than the other way around as after the Taliban-US deal only they control the access to Afghanistan, other than Pakistan.

India will think twice before putting that in danger, unlike barring palm oil imports from Malaysia. Thus, traditional Indian ability to play all sides in a region riven by fault-lines and animosities now stands degraded.

Will the BJP live in denial or adapt its domestic agenda? Only time will tell.

K.C. Singh is a retired Indian civil servant and was the Indian ambassador to Iran.

Human Rights Chief Slams Security Council for Inaction on Syria

The high commissioner for human rights spoke at an informal meeting at the UN shortly after his expected briefing to the Security Council was blocked when Russia requested a procedural vote.

United Nations: The United Nations’s human rights chief slammed the Security Council on Monday for failing to “defend human rights and prevent further loss of life” as the war in Syria that has killed nearly half a million people enters its eighth year.

“The Syrian conflict has been characterised by its absolute disregard for even the most minimal standards of principle and law,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

Saying that many who had sought to document human rights violations had been detained, tortured or killed, Zeid said: “The Security Council has not lived up to the sacrifice of these heroes throughout Syria. It has not taken decisive action to defend human rights and prevent further loss of life.”

The high commissioner for human rights spoke at an informal meeting at the UN shortly after his expected briefing to the Security Council was blocked when Russia requested a procedural vote.

The 15 members of the council attended the informal meeting.

Zeid was critical of the use of veto powers in the council to shield “perpetrators of crimes againsthumanity and war crimes in Syria and elsewhere” from justice.

Russia, the largest international backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has used its veto power nearly a dozen times on possible Security Council action on Syria since the country’s civil war began in 2011.

“This failure to protect the lives and rights of millions of people is corroding not only the work but also the legitimacy of the UN,” said Zeid.

(Reuters)

How Modi Should Play the Global Game of Thrones

The PM needs to make better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days.

The PM needs to make better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at G4 Summit in New York last month. Credit: PTI Photo by Subhav Shukla

Rabindranath Tagore, on a visit to the US to raise money for Visva-Bharati, once ran into John Rockefeller, who instinctively assumed this dark, bearded man in odd clothes must be a beggar, and pressed a dime into his hand. None of the American CEOs Narendra Modi met would have made any such mistake.

Whether he gets the investment, manufacturing, trade and technology he was looking for will depend on what he does over the next few years, but his performances were mesmeric. However, now that the Prime Minister has ended his triumphal swing back and forth across the United States, hypnotising his audiences like a chubby pendulum, it’s time to wake up from the trance he induces, the willing suspension of disbelief that comes with it, and to ask if perhaps he also lulls himself into a stupor. What he said on foreign policy issues was often muddled, and it did not help that reports from the Indian journalists with him were the dying declarations of moths flying into an irresistible flame.

Wasting time on a Terrorism Convention

In California, the Prime Minister claimed that the UN had not defined terrorism in 15 years and asked how long it would take to fight it. This is odd, when India has plaintively claimed for those fifteen years to be one of the battlegrounds in the Global War on Terror. It is also odd because the General Assembly has in fact adopted a definition of terrorism in its “Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism”, adopted in 1994, reiterated after 9/11 in January, 2002.

“that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them;”

It is true that the world is stuck on definitions in the draft Comprehensive Convention against International Terrorism that India proposed in the mid-1990s, when the UN only had a raft of sectoral conventions that banned specific acts of terrorism – nothing that addressed the issue comprehensively. After 9/11, though, the Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions on terrorism, acting under Chapter VII measures, which makes them mandatory. A definition of terrorism is unnecessary, because all that is needed, from SCR 1373 onwards, is a determination that an individual or a group commits acts that the Council considers to be terrorism. This might be and is arbitrary, and means that names are placed on the list only if the P-5 agree. Even with China’s foot-dragging, most of the groups and individuals we want to ban already are on the Council’s list. If Pakistan does not comply with the Council’s requirements, we should highlight this, which we do not.

Clearly, the Prime Minister has been persuaded that the Comprehensive Convention will give us more, since, apart from yoga, this was the only initiative he flogged in his speech to the General Assembly last year. He has brought it up again, and the External Affairs Minister echoed him in the general debate this year, but a Convention now will be academic. If its provisions make Pakistan uncomfortable, it will make itself immune from scrutiny simply by refusing to become a State Party. It cannot be compelled to join, any more than we (or Pakistan) can be to accede to the NPT, the CTBT or the International Criminal Court. It is a pity that the Prime Minister wastes his time on a chimera; it would be an even greater pity if India frittered away energy and diplomatic capital in its pursuit.

It was also not very wise, speaking to an audience that included US law-makers, to link international terrorism with global warming as the two global challenges that remain. Firstly, for most developing countries, and certainly for India, ending the poverty that cripples the lives of billions is the supreme challenge. So too are all the problems that batten on it, including disease, malnutrition, illiteracy (and, in our case, open defecation), which most developing countries would insist are challenges they can overcome only with the help of others, or, as the Prime Minister said, only if humanity unites to meet them. Secondly, it ignores other current challenges that the world faces, including refugees, and the whole complex of issues around cybersecurity and cyber-freedom.

Most importantly, this plays into the hands of the OECD, led by the P-3, who want to project climate change as the greatest current threat to international peace and security, together with terrorism, and would much rather have the Security Council become the forum where decisions are taken. On terrorism, that suits us, on climate change it would be a disaster, since the first casualty would be the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, which in his speech at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development the Prime Minister described as “the bedrock of our collective enterprise”.

Reform at the UN is far from done

On Security Council reform, the Prime Minister took the lead, apparently believing that the decision adopted on the last day of the 69^th session of the General Assembly was a breakthrough that must be exploited. The G-4 countries met at his request, but only to reassure each other that they were the worthiest candidates possible. That contrasts with the decisiveness of the first summit, after which the G-4 tabled a draft resolution in the General Assembly in 2005. Sadly, they did not coordinate with the African Group, which put out a competing draft, the two were played off against each other by their adversaries, neither was pressed to a vote, and the G-4 suffered a calamitous loss of nerve and confidence. The decision to try informal consultations followed, and has led, almost a decade later, to the collation of the responses of all states and groups which honoured the President’s request for written submissions. This is what the 69^th General Assembly adopted as its last act in September.

Opponents of an expansion of the permanent membership would much rather have had exactly the same procedural draft that the General Assembly has adopted for the last few years, just renewing the mandate for informal consultations. Rather foolishly, they tried to block a reference to the collation, even though it was a redundant compilation of positions endlessly repeated for 20 years, and often mutually contradictory.

They failed, and the Indian diplomats who thwarted them, with the help of their colleagues from Germany, Japan and Brazil, deserve unstinted praise. It is not easy at the UN to get a decision through that the US, China and Russia oppose, and the fact that the G-4 could pull it off shows that they have a fair diplomatic heft too. But it is also the case that the opponents of reform were being bloody-minded. It is hard to get votes for a position that is pointlessly obstructive, which is why they caved in and accepted a consensus. However, it would be foolish to believe that because the nay-sayers tried to block the adoption of a meaningless document, it must be meaningful. It is not, and it is not a negotiating text.

Get ready to roll the dice

If the Prime Minister is serious about getting the General Assembly to act on Security Council reform at this session, he needs to seize the initiative. This means reviving the G-4 draft, which remains valid, and tabling it again with modifications if needed, this time with the co-sponsorship of the African Group and as many others as possible. By coincidence, several opportunities will soon present themselves to prepare the ground. As next steps

The Prime Minister should raise this with Chancellor Merkel during her visit and get her to agree that this is the way to go. Of the G-4, Germany now carries the most influence. Japan and Brazil will agree if it does.

If Germany agrees, he should raise this with the African leaders he is hosting later this month, and ask them to co-sponsor a draft with the G-4 at the current session. It would be ideal if a draft can be agreed upon between officials and adopted at the summit, but if not, a decision that the G-4 and the African Group would present a joint text should be announced at the end of the summit.

The government should leverage other events it is hosting or co-hosting, as for instance the Conclave with Latin America and the Caribbean that the CII will hold in October in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs, to send word back through the ministers and magnates who attend that India wants to get a decision through at this General Assembly, and will value their support of their governments.

Once a draft is ready, and every effort should be made to put it together within weeks, we should pull out all the stops to get our neighbours to co-sponsor. In 2005, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives came on board. This time it should be possible to enlist Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well, even if Nepal is a problem. If Pakistan is the only hold-out, that deepens its isolation on reform.

A G-4 draft, tabled with the African Group, and sponsored by a wide range of countries, including neighbours of the aspirants, would be very hard to defeat. This would be a better use of India’s diplomatic energy and talent than the childish squabbling with Pakistan that we have seen over the past few days.

Satyabrata Pal is a former Indian diplomat. He served as India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, and as a member of the National Human Rights Commission