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India pressures Iran on key port - India - The Times of India
NEW DELHI: India wants to speed up its development of the Chahbahar port, and will push the Iranian government this week to put its facilitation on fast track.
Shamsuddin Husseini, the Iranian economic and finance minister, will lead a delegation of mainly economic and energy department officials for the India-Iran joint commission, which takes place here ON July 8-9. The Indian side will be led by foreign minister S M Krishna. The Iranian visit comes days after the US signed a tough set of sanctions against Tehran, which followed UN sanctions and a more difficut set of sanctions from the EU.
Although the Chahbahar port has been an Indian project for some time, the Iranian side has been notoriously lax in keeping to its end of the bargain.
The port is strategically important -- serving as the entry point for India's outreach into Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. For this purpose, India also spent a lot of money and human lives to build the Zaranj-Delaram road in Afghanistan's Nimroz province, which was intended to link up with the Chahbahar port. But establishing those linkages turned out to be more difficult than India imagined. The political situation in Iran over the past year has scarcely helped.
The importance of Chahbahar is heightened with signs that Pakistan may work out some sort of power-sharing arrangement between Kabul and the Taliban that could ensure a US exit. It's a prospect that everybody in the region is working actively towards despite US protestations that it wasn't prepared to leave Afghanistan that soon.
It means that Iran and India once again have to work together on Afghanistan, if they want to limit or act as a check on Taliban-Pakistan power. In the past few years, Iran has reportedly developed some links with the Taliban, particularly as it battles a growing drug problem imported from Afghanistan. But a radical Sunni government in Kabul is not among Iran's favourite options.
In a future arrangement, Iran will definitely exercise its influence in western Afghanistan, influence that it has carefully nurtured in the past few years, as has India in a variety of other spheres.
But if India is to maintain a toehold in Afghanistan, Chahbahar becomes very important. Of course, Chahbahar would be equally important to the US logistics supply chain, if the US and Iran could manage to work out some kind of a relationship, because it would give the US a breather from the Pakistani stranglehold of its supplies into Afghanistan. As a senior official observed ruefully, "Its actually in India's interest to get US and Iran talking to each other."
Recent estimates say the Iranian system is becoming more militarised, with the Revolutionary Guards becoming ever more powerful. Its unclear what they think of these strategic moves.
The joint commission will also discuss other areas of cooperation between India and Iran, particularly in the fields of agriculture, pharmaceuticals and mining.
Though the Iran gas pipeline may not happen anytime soon, and India will probably be one of the first countries to enforce UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, evolving geopolitics ensure a close relationship between the two countries.
NEW DELHI: India wants to speed up its development of the Chahbahar port, and will push the Iranian government this week to put its facilitation on fast track.
Shamsuddin Husseini, the Iranian economic and finance minister, will lead a delegation of mainly economic and energy department officials for the India-Iran joint commission, which takes place here ON July 8-9. The Indian side will be led by foreign minister S M Krishna. The Iranian visit comes days after the US signed a tough set of sanctions against Tehran, which followed UN sanctions and a more difficut set of sanctions from the EU.
Although the Chahbahar port has been an Indian project for some time, the Iranian side has been notoriously lax in keeping to its end of the bargain.
The port is strategically important -- serving as the entry point for India's outreach into Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. For this purpose, India also spent a lot of money and human lives to build the Zaranj-Delaram road in Afghanistan's Nimroz province, which was intended to link up with the Chahbahar port. But establishing those linkages turned out to be more difficult than India imagined. The political situation in Iran over the past year has scarcely helped.
The importance of Chahbahar is heightened with signs that Pakistan may work out some sort of power-sharing arrangement between Kabul and the Taliban that could ensure a US exit. It's a prospect that everybody in the region is working actively towards despite US protestations that it wasn't prepared to leave Afghanistan that soon.
It means that Iran and India once again have to work together on Afghanistan, if they want to limit or act as a check on Taliban-Pakistan power. In the past few years, Iran has reportedly developed some links with the Taliban, particularly as it battles a growing drug problem imported from Afghanistan. But a radical Sunni government in Kabul is not among Iran's favourite options.
In a future arrangement, Iran will definitely exercise its influence in western Afghanistan, influence that it has carefully nurtured in the past few years, as has India in a variety of other spheres.
But if India is to maintain a toehold in Afghanistan, Chahbahar becomes very important. Of course, Chahbahar would be equally important to the US logistics supply chain, if the US and Iran could manage to work out some kind of a relationship, because it would give the US a breather from the Pakistani stranglehold of its supplies into Afghanistan. As a senior official observed ruefully, "Its actually in India's interest to get US and Iran talking to each other."
Recent estimates say the Iranian system is becoming more militarised, with the Revolutionary Guards becoming ever more powerful. Its unclear what they think of these strategic moves.
The joint commission will also discuss other areas of cooperation between India and Iran, particularly in the fields of agriculture, pharmaceuticals and mining.
Though the Iran gas pipeline may not happen anytime soon, and India will probably be one of the first countries to enforce UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, evolving geopolitics ensure a close relationship between the two countries.
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