New Delhi
13 May 2010
India will be looking to reset its ties with Iran when external affairs minister SM
Krishna travels to the Persian Gulf nation this week. Iran has assumed a significance of
its own in India's strategic calculus, particularly in the context of the unfolding situation
in Afghanistan. As neighbours of Afghanistan, Iran and India share responsibility for
stability and development in that country. They share common concerns about the
resurgence of Taliban or its accommodation in governance structures in Afghanistan.
Mr Krishna will leave for Tehran on May 15 for the G-15 summit, on the margins of which
he will hold bilateral talks with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki. Mr Krishna's
visit will be in a series of recent interactions which New Delhi has had with Tehran,
starting with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's visit there in February this year for the
seventh round of foreign office consultations / strategic dialogue, and Deputy National
Security Adviser Alok Prasad's talks with Iran's Supreme National Security Council
Secretary Saeed Jalili in Tehran earlier this week.
The Indian engagement of Iran will come at a time when the US and its allies seek to
ramp up negotiations at the United Nations for what they call "smart and strong"
sanctions against the Persian Gulf country. New Delhi has indicated that it is opposed to
sanctions that would hurt the common people of that country. "It continues to be our view
that sanctions that target Iranian people and cause difficulties to the ordinary man,
woman and child would not be conducive to a resolution of this question[.] We do not
want more instability in the region. Iran is very much a part of our region. Iran for
instance has a very important role to play in the developing situation in Afghanistan and
we of course have strong bilateral ties with Iran," Ms Rao has said.
The India-Iran bilateral relationship nosedived after September 2005, when India first
voted against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and it has not picked
up since then. An immediate casualty of the worsening ties was the LNG deal. New Delhi
did not help matters by dragging its feet on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
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