In its report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) disclosed on March 20 this year that volume of international transfers of major weapons was 24 percent higher in the period 2007-11 compared to the 2002-06 period. While indicating the purchases of arms and weapons by various countries, the report pointed out, “India is the world’s largest recipient of arms… India’s imports of major weapons increased by 38 percent between 2002-06 and 2007-11.”
It is of particular attention that under the pretext of military build up by China and Pakistan, India on March 16 this year, boosted military spending by 17 percent to $40 billion. In this regard, announcing the 2012-13 budget, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the parliament, the government is engaged in a massive programme to upgrade the country’s ageing military hardware, increasing defence spending to $40 billion for the financial year to March 31, 2013.
Now, India is the biggest importer of arms in the world. New Delhi’s military is acquiring a slew of new equipment from combat aircraft to submarines and artillery. It is currently finalising a deal with France’s Dassault Aviation to buy 126 Rafale fighter jets in a contract worth an estimated $12 billion.
Despite a series of political setbacks which exposed vulnerability of India’s beleaguered regime, it avoided bold reforms in its annual budget to shore up growth and modest targets to rein in a bloated deficit. The government reflects investors’ disappointment with Mukherjee’s half-hearted attack on the worst deficit among the emerging-markets.
However, on November 2 last year, the United States agreed to sell India the most expensive—the new F-35 fighter jets. In a report to the US Congress, the Pentagon said, “We believe US aircraft such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)… to be the best in the world”, referring to the radar-evading F-35 jet. The Pentagon indicated that the programme faces rising costs, with a price tag of nearly $150 million each. It also noted that India is working with Russia on developing a fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
Notably, on November 3, 2011, CNN TV channel pointed out, “The Pentagon is portraying India as a major customer for US military arsenal… India also decided a major purchase of US F-16 and F-18 fighters…is a reminder of the vast sums in play.”
James Hardy, Asia Pacific Editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly stated, “With a potential contract price of US$9 billion to US$14 billion, this is the single biggest competition in the global defence aviation industry.”
While the Pentagon’s government-to-government program of foreign military sales to India have included C-17 and C-130 aircraft, Northrop Grumman E-2D, the latest version of the E-2 Hawkeye, aircraft radar systems, Harpoon weapons and specialised tactical equipments. It will cost 232 million dollars. Besides, America signed a deal of civil energy technology with India in 2008, which lifted sanctions on New Delhi in order to import nuclear technology.
In recent years, India has bought reconnaissance aircraft from US aerospace major Boeing worth 2.1 billion-dollars, medium range missiles for 1.4 billion dollars from Israeli Aerospace Industries, and signed a contract with the Russian Aircraft Corporation to upgrade its MiG 29 squadrons for 965 million dollars. Several deals are planned for the near future including one of the largest arms contracts of recent times—an 11-billion-dollar project to acquire 126 multi-role combat aircraft.
As regards New Delhi’s purchases from Israel, India’s The Tribune wrote, “Tel Aviv “agreed to share its expertise with India in various fields such as surveillance satellites and space exploration.” With the support of Israel, New Delhi has been acquiring an element of strategic depth by setting up logistical bases in the Indian Ocean for its navy.
Nevertheless, Indian defence expenditures have no bounds. In the past decade, India has spent billions of dollars on purchases of arms, planes, radars and ships from the US, Russia, Britain, Germany, Israel and France including other western countries.
Over the next 12 years, India is set to spend a whopping US$200 billion on defence acquisitions to replace its outdated inventory. In this respect, on February 15, 2010, a report of the Indian strategic defense magazine (India Strategic’s DefExpo) had pointed out that 70 per cent of the inventory of the Indian armed forces is 20-plus years old, and needs to be replaced with the modern technology. It explained that nearly half of this funding ($100b) will go to the Indian Air Force (IAF), which would need to replace more than half of its combat jet fleet as well as the entire transport aircraft and helicopter fleet. The army needs new guns, tanks, rocket launchers, multi-terrain vehicles, while the navy needs ships, aircraft carriers and a new range of nuclear submarines.
It is noteworthy that from 1994 to 1997 India’s defence budget was increased from 20 percent to 24.4 percent. In 2009, New Delhi increased its defense budget by a whopping 28.2 percent or Rs 130,000.00 million. Some experts estimate that military spending will increase further, totaling as much as 200 billion dollars over the period to 2022.
While exposing India’s ambitious defence policy, Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) has revealed in its report of April 2011, “India’s defence budget has roughly quadrupled (in real terms) since 2001—reaching $36.3 billion in the 2011–2012 budget—and enabled the implementation of long-term acquisition plans. Of the total defence budget, approximately 40 percent (some $14.5 billion) is allocated to the defence capital outlay budget.”
In fact, currently, more than half of India’s budget is allocated for armed forces, but its major portion is being expended on defence purchases and debt servicing, which leaves less than half for everything else including infrastructure development projects, education, healthcare, poverty alleviation, and various human services. New Delhi’s latest arms purchases will leave even less for what India needs most to lift hundreds of millions of its citizens from abject poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease.
Indian defence analyst Ravinder Pal Singh, while calling New Delhi’s unending defence spending at the cost of poverty-alleviation—with security requirements competing with socio-economic concerns for money calls it a guns-versus-butter question.
In this context, a report of the United Nations pointed out that India ranks 134th of 182 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index. It estimated that 50 per cent of the world’s undernourished population lives in India. Nearly 31 per cent of the billion-plus Indians earn less than a dollar a day.
Secretary General of the Control Arms Foundation of India Binalakshmi Nepram remarks, “When people are dying of poverty and bad sanitation, what protection will arms provide them?”
Indian civil society organisations, while complaining of excessive defence spending on buying, indicated that the defence budget is rapidly increasing every year because of India’s unending defence imports.
While, the world is rapidly moving towards the idea of one world as in the cyber age, states prefer welfare of their people at the cost of undue defence expenditures. Europe which learnt a drastic lesson from the two world wars, presents an ideal model by integrating the continent through the European Union. On the other side, despite criticism from various circles, the Indian government’s unlimited defence purchases are in full swing.
Ignoring regional problems and resolution of Indo-Pak issues-especially the thorny dispute of Kashmir, Indian rulers claim that they do not have any aggressive designs. But it becomes a big joke of the 21st century, reminding a maxim, “armed to the teeth, but no enemy”, if we take cognisance of India’s unlimited defence imports, raising India as the biggest arms recipient of the world.
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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations
Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com
March 26, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Center for Strategic & International Studies, India, Indian Air Force, Ravinder Pal Singh, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute |
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A year after the nuclear catastrophe began at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan, the world has a historic chance to put an end to one of the biggest frauds ever played on the global public to promote a patently unsafe, accident-prone, expensive and centralised form of energy generation based upon splitting the uranium atom to produce heat, boil water, and spin a turbine. Candidly, that’s what nuclear power generation is all about.
The lofty promise of boundless material progress and universal prosperity based on cheap, safe and abundant energy through “Atoms for Peace”, held out by US President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1953, was mired in deception and meant to temper the prevalent perception of atomic energy as a malign force following the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Eisenhower was a hawk committed to building up the US nuclear arsenal from under 1,500 to over 20,000 warheads and sought to “compensate” for this by dressing up nuclear energy as a positive force. “Atoms for Peace” camouflaged the huge US military build-up in the 1950s.
The nuclear promise was also based on untested, unrealistic assumptions about atomic electricity being safe and “too cheap even to meter”. The projection sat ill at ease with the subsidies, worth scores of billions, which nuclear received. The US navy transferred reactor designs developed for its nuclear-propelled submarines to General Electric and Westinghouse for free. The US also passed a law to limit the nuclear industry’s accident liability to a ludicrously low level.
Fifty-five years on, the world has lost over $1,000 billion in subsidies, cash losses, abandoned projects and other damage from nuclear power. Decontaminating the Fukushima site alone is estimated to cost $623 billion, not counting the medical treatment costs for the thousands of likely cancers.
All of the world’s 400-odd reactors are capable of undergoing a catastrophic accident similar to Fukushima. They will remain a liability until decommissioned (entombed in concrete) at huge public expense, which is one-third to one-half of what it cost to build them. They will also leave behind nuclear waste, which remains hazardous for thousands of years, and which science has no way of storing safely.
All this for a technology which contributes just two percent of the world’s final energy consumption! Nuclear power has turned out worse than a “Faustian bargain” – a deal with the devil. Even the conservative Economist magazine, which long backed nuclear power, calls it “the dream that failed.”
Nuclear power experienced decline on its home ground because it became too risky and “too costly to hook to a meter”. The US hasn’t ordered a single new reactor since 1973, even before the Three Mile Island meltdown (1979). Western Europe hasn’t completed a new reactor since Chernobyl (1986). As a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission put it: “The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of NRC-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes.”
Nuclear power is now on the run globally. The number of reactors operating worldwide fell from the historic peak of 444 in 2002 to 429 this past March 1. Their share in global electricity supply has shrunk from 17 to 13 percent. And it’s likely to fall further as some 180-plus 30 years-old or older reactors are retired. Just about 60 new ones are planned.
After Fukushima, nobody is going to build nuclear reactors unless they get a big subsidy or high returns guaranteed by the state – or unless they are China, India or Pakistan. China’s rulers don’t have to bother about democracy, public opinion, or safety standards.
Nor are India’s rulers moved by these considerations. They are desperate to deliver on the reactor contracts promised to the US, France and Russia for lobbying for the US-India nuclear deal in the International Atomic Energy Agency. Manmohan Singh has even stooped to maligning Indian anti-nuclear protesters as foreign-funded, as if they had no minds of their own, and as if the government’s own priority wasn’t to hitch India’s energy economy to imported reactors. Pakistan’s nuclear czars are shamefully complacent about nuclear safety.
Nuclear power is bound up with secrecy, deception and opacity, which clash with democracy. It evokes fear and loathing in many countries, and can only be promoted by force. It will increasingly pit governments against their own public, with terrible consequences for civil liberties. A recent BBC-GlobeScan poll shows that 69 percent of the people surveyed in 23 countries oppose building new reactors, including 90 percent in Germany, 84 percent in Japan, 80 percent in Russia and 83 percent in France. This proportion has sharply risen since 2005. Only 22 percent of people in the 12 countries which operate nuclear plants favour building new ones.
Nuclear reactors are intrinsically hazardous high-pressure high-temperature systems, in which a fission chain-reaction is barely checked from getting out of control. But control mechanisms can fail for many reasons, including a short circuit, faulty valve, operator error, fire, loss of auxiliary power, or an earthquake or tsunami.
No technology is 100 percent safe. High-risk technologies demand a meticulous, self-critical and highly alert safety culture which assumes that accidents will happen despite precautions. The world has witnessed five core meltdowns in 15,000 reactor-years (number of reactors multiplied by duration of operations). At this rate, we can expect one core meltdown every eight years in the world’s 400-odd reactors. This is simply unacceptable.
Yet, the nuclear industry behaves as if this couldn’t happen. … Full article
March 19, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | China, Dwight D Eisenhower, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, India, International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan, Nuclear power |
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The magnet bomb that exploded on an Israeli Embassy diplomat’s car in Delhi on February 13 seemed on the surface to be consistent with an Iranian-sponsored action.
It was carried out with same method by which Israel’s Iranian proxy, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, had assassinated an Iranian scientist in mid-January. It occurred on the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mugniyeh, which Hezbollah had vowed to avenge. And it happened at the same time as what appeared to be attempted bombings in Bangkok and Tbilisi.
But a review of the evidence uncovered thus far makes the link to Iran begin to look very dubious. Instead, it points to the distinct possibility that the Israelis planned a carefully limited bomb attack that was not intended to cause serious injury to Israeli diplomatic personnel, but that would advance the larger Israeli narrative on the need to punish Iran.
The evidence surrounding that bomb itself indicates a series of decisions by the terrorist team that is fundamentally inconsistent with an Iranian-Hezbollah revenge bombing. The preliminary forensic analysis of the bomb itself had estimated it to be 250-300 grams of explosives, but sources in the investigation later reduced the estimate to 200-250 grams. The 250-gram bomb that exploded near the Delhi High Court in May 2011 did not even damage the car under which it had been placed and was characterised by Police Commissioner B K Gupta as a “low-intensity and mild blast”.
Burning questions
The main damage to the Israeli diplomat’s car was not from the explosion but from the fire, which burned so slowly that the occupants suffered no burns.
If the bomb had been filled with shrapnel of iron filings, nails or glass, or if it had been attached underneath the fuel tank or on the door next to the passenger, that bomb would have seriously injured or killed the passenger, Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of the Israeli Defense Attaché. But Delhi police were able to determine that the bomb contained no such potentially deadly shrapnel. And an examination of the videos and photos of the car after the bombing revealed that the bomb had been attached instead to the rear of the vehicle, where it would have the least impact on the occupants.
Indian investigators obtained a fourth piece of evidence bearing on the intentions of the planners from their interview with Yehoshua-Koren. She told them the bomb did not go off for 30 to 40 seconds after she felt a bump from the rear of the car and saw the motorcyclist go past her window. Indian investigators had assumed that the bomb had operated on a five- or 10-second delay, like other magnet bombs with which they were familiar – only enough time for the motorcyclist to get far enough away from the blast.
Yehoshua-Koren did not get out of the car before the bomb went off, and suffered what the Israeli Defense Ministry called “moderate“ wounds – evidently from metal fragments from the rear hatch. She was nevertheless able to exit the car and get to the Israeli Embassy without any assistance.
Israeli commentary on the bombing suggested that the Iranian-sponsored terrorist team had simply proven to be ineffective in carrying out the bombing. But the combination of these four distinct indicators strongly suggests that the operation was planned so that the passenger in the car would not be injured.
Unclear patterns
Israel claimed that the evidence links the Delhi bombing to other alleged Iranian-Hezbollah plots in Tbilisi and Bangkok. Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon declared, ”It is the same pattern, the same bomb, the same lab, the same factory”.
But investigators in Delhi to concluded that the operations in Delhi and Bangkok were “unrelated“.
Despite the fact that a group of Iranian passport-holders were clearly involved with highly lethal bombs in Bangkok, there is good reason to doubt that they were working for Iran’s IRGC or Hezbollah. They spent their first three days in the country with Thai prostitutes at Pattaya. That profile suggests Iranian mercenaries, like the former kickboxer hired by Mossad to assassinate Iranian scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi in January 2010, rather than Iranian or Hezbollah operatives.
India‘s importance
In the larger context, it is very difficult to believe that Iran would have chosen New Delhi as the location for revenge against Israel, given the importance of India as a buyer of Iranian oil and India’s delicately balanced political-diplomatic position in the larger conflict.
India had just replaced China as Iran’s single biggest crude oil customer, having increased its imports to roughly 550,000 barrels a day in January, which compensated for a drop in sales to China. And the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had resisted pressure from the United States and Europe to reduce its purchases from Iran, even working with Iran to find ways to get around the planned sanctions against Iran’s National Bank. India’s Commerce Ministry was planning a large business delegation to Iran to discuss increased trade.
India had thus taken on the role of potential “spoiler” in the Western sanctions strategy against Iran. This central geopolitical reality prompted New Delhi’s “Economic Times” to ask, “Why would Iran go and poke its finger in the eye of its best customer, especially knowing full well that Israel will use even the flimsiest excuse to put the blame on it?”
Indeed, it was Israel, not Iran that stood to gain politically from the terrorist car bomb in Delhi. Israel was well aware that a terrorist bombing in Delhi that could be blamed on Tehran was a potential lever to change India’s policy toward Iran. As an Israeli official told the Wall Street Journal, if India were to adopt Netanyahu’s position that Iran was responsible for the bombing, it would take the India-Iran relationship to “a whole different level”.
Nearly two weeks before the bombing, Israel acted to ensure that Indians would assume that a terrorist attack in Delhi on that date had been carried out by Iran. A letter to the Delhi police on February 1 signed by the Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission in Delhi and the First Secretary responsible for security expressed concern that Iran and Hezbollah would take revenge on the anniversary of the Mugniyeh assassination by carrying out terrorist actions against Israelis. It also referred to the possibility of Iranian revenge for the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan on January 11. Although the letter did not specify that an attack might take place in Delhi, Mossad chief Tamir Pardo led a delegation of intelligence officials on a visit to Delhi around the same time and turned over a list of 50 Iranian nationals with the request that they be kept under surveillance.
The Israeli letter referred to an alleged Hezbollah terror plot against Israelis that had been broken up in Bangkok in January. But the idea of a Hezbollah plan to kill Israelis in Thailand had come only from Israeli intelligence – not from any local sources. The Thai police detained Hussein Atris, a Swedish-Lebanese, in January only because Israeli intelligence officials had told them they “suspected” that he and two other Lebanese, whom they claimed were linked to Hezbollah, might carry out terrorist attacks at tourist sites popular with Israelis.
Atris admitted to owning large supplies of urea fertiliser and ammonium nitrate, which are ingredients in bombs, but Thai investigators concluded that they were not connected to any terror plot in Thailand, because of the absence of any other bomb components. The head of Thailand’s National Security Council, General Wichean Potephosree, a former chief of police, expressed doubt that Atris was a terrorist, as Israel had claimed.
After the Bangkok explosion, the Israelis renewed the claim of an Iran-Hezbollah terror threat in Bangkok, alleging that the bombs found in in all three capitals in mid-February were “exactly the same kind of devices”. But we now know that was not the case.
We may never be able to establish with certainty what happened in Delhi, Bangkok and Tbilisi earlier this month, but the evidence that has come to light thus far doesn’t support the widely accepted notion that Iran and Hezbollah were behind it. That evidence is consistent, however, with a clever Israeli “false flag” car bombing operation that would not injure the passenger but would serve its broader strategic interests: dividing India from Iran and pushing US public opinion further towards support for war against Iran.
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Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
March 3, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Bangkok, Hezbollah, India, Iran, Israel |
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The bombing of an Israeli embassy car in Delhi threatens India’s diplomatic maneuvers between Israel and Iran, and has put India’s discreetly nurtured ties with Israel since 1992 through a severe test. Those who are attracted to Israel’s depiction of Iran as a terrorist threat to world peace would do well to read historian Mark Perry’s account, revealing that Israel is recruiting, and collaborating with, terrorist groups in a secret war with Iran. That low-level conflict is spreading. Israel’s latest reaction should be seen in the light of Perry’s revelations.
The Israeli government’s hasty and aggressive posture following the Delhi bombing has caused offense in the Indian capital. Officials in Delhi have made plain that India will not be recruited into the anti-Iran alliance under Israeli–U.S. pressure. India will not allow “Washington, the Jewish lobby and much of Europe to push the country into a corner” over Iran. How India conducts its ties with that country dating back to ancient times is its business. Furthermore, police investigations into the bombing cannot be rushed to suit external interests. The law of the land must take its course.
What particularly irked Indian officials was that immediately after the Delhi bomb (another device was defused by Georgian police in Tbilisi on the same day), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel sought to upstage India’s police investigations into the incident. Netanyahu described the Iranian government as the world’s “largest terror exporter” and Hezbollah in Lebanon as Iran’s “protégé.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman went further saying, “We know exactly who is responsible for the attack and who planned it, and we’re not going to take it lying down.”
As if that was not enough. Israel’s Energy and Water Resources Minister Uri Landau intervened with his own comment, calling “India’s support for the Palestinians at the UN a mistake,” and that he intended to “persuade” the Indians to change their stand. And Israel reportedly asked India to help sponsor a resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council, of which India is an elected member at present.
A full-scale Israeli offensive to force a complete overhaul of Indian foreign policy was under way. In the unlikely scenario of it happening, such an event would be a geopolitical earthquake. India’s reliance on oil producers who are firmly in the U.S. camp would be dangerously high. There would be other consequences in the short run. An audacious attack by Israel on Iran, with or without U.S. support, could be nearer, and so would the prospects of a wider Middle East conflict. For these reasons, India now stands between the present and the worst case scenario.
Police investigations were only beginning in Delhi when Israeli ministers spoke with such shocking certainly––the worst kind of megaphone diplomacy. For those sitting in the Indian capital, certain inferences were difficult to avoid. India had recently announced that it would abide by the UN sanctions against Iran, but would not obey additional sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. India would continue to buy oil from Iran, and an Indian trade delegation would visit Tehran in coming weeks.
Delhi was by no means alone in asserting an independent stance. Other countries, too, have been resisting what they consider to be strong-arm tactics by the anti-Iran bloc of nations to force reluctant governments to toe the line. The United States, the European Union and Israel are far from happy about this.
That the affair threatened India’s massive trade with Iran, and could derail India’s capacity to formulate its foreign policy, was not lost in Delhi. A number of Indian politicians and senior officials made the government’s position clear. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said that terrorism and trade were “separate issues,” and that business with Iran would continue. A former diplomat of India and now a leading commentator, M. K. Bhadrakumar, described the Israeli offensive as a “smear campaign” that “Tehran’s agents had been going about placing bombs in New Delhi, Tbilisi and Bangkok.”
Meanwhile, police investigations, and a visit by an Israeli Mossad team to Delhi, were continuing. Indian officials insisted that there was no “conclusive evidence” to link the attack to any particular group or country. And a senior police officer was categorical in saying that there was no link between the Delhi bomb and explosions that occurred in Bangkok the day after.
The Indians are normally too polite to engage in crude public diplomacy. But when ministers of a country of under 8 million, albeit advanced and heavily militarized, try to dictate policy to a nation of 1.2 billion people, it is perhaps too much for the Indian sensitivities.
I am on record as saying that, in the challenging 1990s decade when the Soviet Union collapsed, India was hasty and ill-advised to build a “flyover” to Israel, and from Israel straight on to the United States. Over the years, Israel’s multi-billion dollar sales of weapons based on American and Russian technologies, and intelligence sharing, have given India easy access to an arms bazaar. But there is a cost. India can be vulnerable to pressure, and has ignored its interests in the Muslim world. Simply put, successive Indian governments put too many eggs in the (Israeli–U.S.) basket.
Now that India asserts its strategic interests independent of the United States and Israel, with the other members of the group called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), it faces a trial of strength. The outcome will depend on whether Delhi can establish its capacity to turn away from what look like instant gains, and promises for future, to secure its long-term interests that are essential for India’s place on the world stage.
February 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu, India, Iran, Israel |
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Imagine this scenario: A developing nation decides to selectively share its precious natural resource, selling only to “friendly” countries and not “hostile” ones. Now imagine this is oil we’re talking about and the nation in question is the Islamic Republic of Iran…
Early news reports on Wednesday claimed that Iran pre-empted European Union sanctions by turning off the oil spigot to six member-states: the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal.
The reports were premature. According to a highly-placed source in the country, Iran will only stop its oil supply to these nations if they fail to adopt new trading conditions: 1) signing 3 to 5-year contracts to import Iranian oil, with all agreements concluded prior to March 21, and 2) payment for the oil will no longer be accepted within 60-day cycles, as in the past, and must instead be honored immediately.
Negotiations are currently underway with all six nations. Iran, says the source, expects to cut oil supplies to at least two nations based on their current positions. These are likely to be Holland and France.
Meanwhile, the other four EU member-states are in dire financial straits. They are knee-deep in the kind of fiscal crisis that has no hope of resolution unless they exit the union and go back to banana republic basics. Yet, they found the time to sanction Iran over some convoluted American-Israeli theory that the Islamic Republic may one day decide to build a nuclear weapon. I am sure arm-twisting was involved – the kind that involves dollars for votes.
But I digress. This blog is really about ideas. And not just ideas, but really ridiculous ideas.
New World Order Jump-Started by Iran?
Alternative sources of oil will be found in a jiffy for these beleaguered EU economies. But this isn’t so much about a few barrels of the stuff that fuels the world’s engines.
This is about the idea that a singular action taken amidst the political and economic re-set about to take place globally, can propel us in a whole new direction overnight.
The past few years have shown that there is no global financial leadership capable of pulling us back from the abyss. The US national debt hovers around the $15.3 Trillion mark. Its GDP in 2011 was just under $15 Trillion. You do the math – there is no fixing that one. The only next-big-thing coming out of that dead end will be the complete transformation of the current global economic order.
But how will that take place without leadership and clear direction? I’m betting hard that It will not come from the top, nor will it be directed. The new global economic order will be organic, regional and quite sudden.
What do I mean? Imagine: Iran stops selling oil to the EU; China tells the US to take a hike on currency values; India starts trading in large quantities of rupees; Russia’s central bank becomes a depot for holding dollars that don’t need to pass through New York; the creation of a global payment messaging system competing with SWIFT. Now imagine that a combination of actions – triggered only by an attempt to circumvent some really very silly sanctions – can suddenly unleash some unexpected possibilities that were beyond the realm of imagination a mere few years ago.
Imagine the emergence, say, of regional economic hubs, powered by the currencies of the local hegemonic powers, where bartering natural resources, goods and services becomes as commonplace as transactions involving currency transfers. Because of the frailty inherent in dealing with these new local currencies and a bartering system, nations tend to trade most with those closest to them in geography and culture. Shocking? Maybe not. Sometimes it just takes a need for change…and a handy tipping point.
“This is not the time to fan the flames,” someone should have told the United States. “You and your pals are sitting in a jalopy tottering on the cliff’s edge – why risk making moves now?” they should have warned. “Be a little less arrogant,” would have been sage advice.
But Washington is absolutely, irrevocably, dangerously fixated on showing Iran who’s boss, and spends a good part of every day trying to tighten the screws around the Islamic Republic. For the most part, the US’s pursuit of this dubious objective has instead stripped it of the vital political tools it once wielded. No more UN Security Council resolutions, no more unscrutinized military adventures. The only thing left is the nefarious tentacles of the United States Department of Treasury and its financial weapons. “The new tools of imperialism,” as once US-friendly central banker in the Mideast bluntly put it to me.
I only hear shrill desperation when politicos now parrot the “sanctions are biting” line. Here’s a juicy tidbit for those rolling their eyes right now: Goldman Sachs – America’s premier investment bank and Wall-Street God – has identified the Islamic Republic as one of the “Next 11” growth drivers of the global economy after the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations. BRIC was a term coined by Goldman Sachs, if you recall, and boy, were they right about that one.
Thirty years of “biting” sanctions and sanctions “with teeth” have achieved the following: “Strong or improving growth conditions,” said Goldman Sachs just last year, “combined with favorable demographics, form the foundation of the N-11 growth story.” The investment bank, furthermore, estimates “a measurable increase in the N-11’s share of global GDP, from roughly 12% in the current decade to 17% in 2040-2049.”
It’s a bad global economy we are facing right now, but Goldman Sachs’ charts illustrate that Iran is still one of five nations in the N-11 pot whose “productivity and sustainability of growth” is above average.
Shrugging off Dollar Dominance
A British investment research firm wrote in January: “Sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran effectively restricts Iranian oil sales to barter contracts or to state-to-state agreements utilizing non-G8 currencies…It represents a major irritation to the Iranians, rather than a chokehold.”
The authors specify the Chinese Yuan as the non-G8 currency, but in the past few days that scenario has busted open with the addition of the Indian Rupee into the mix.
The new trade deal inked between Iran and India ensures Rupee payment for 45% of Iranian oil imports, with the balance remaining in Indian banks to pay for exports to the Islamic Republic. This achieves two important things that are an unintended consequence of US sanctions: firstly, it eliminates the Dollar as the trading currency (note that oil prices have traditionally been priced in US Dollars); secondly, it significantly accelerates economic integration between Iran and one of the four largest emerging economies in the world.
D.S. Rawat, head of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India, says of the agreement: “The potential of trade and economic relations between the two countries can touch the level of $30 billion by 2015 from the current level of $13.7 billion dollars in 2010-11.”
There’s more. During the course of the past two weeks, Iran has purchased around 1.1 million tons of cereals and wheat from international markets – including products originating in Germany, Canada, Brazil and Australia – which it has paid for entirely in currencies other than the Dollar.
The US Dollar, which has been the international reserve currency for close to a century, is on its way out anyway. America’s huge balance of payments deficit has weakened US fundamentals and made investors wary. The downside of the Dollar’s changing status is that the Federal Reserve loses a lot of flexibility in managing its currency and the US economy. That does not bode well for keeping the US competitive against the BRIC nations and other emerging economies.
Iran Sanctions Biting the US Right Back?
It takes one solid idea, in a world desperately seeking them, to start the creaky shift to a new global order. Emerging economies have been nipping at the heels of the world’s governing bodies for decades, demanding entry into the hallowed halls of the UN Security Council’s permanent members; insisting on a seat at the main table at the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization.
When European leaders went begging for scraps at the last G-20 meeting, the BRICs found their feet and yawned a collective “no.” It signaled a reversal of fortunes, that meeting, and the idea that they can forge their own path was born. The BRICs then announced their first joint foreign policy statement last November – on Syria, of all places. The idea matured.
But US/EU sanctions against Iran are giving the idea steam. One has to act when faced with a dilemma, after all – and that dilemma has been literally foisted in the faces of nonaligned countries the world around: “sanction Iran or else.”
Now they are just shrugging and finding ways around the maze of traps set up by the Department of Treasury. Why should they care much? What is the United States today but an unwieldy bully with few arrows left in its quiver?
This week the US is putting the screws on Belgian-based SWIFT. If you’ve ever wired money to another country, you have used SWIFT – it is essentially the messaging system between banks that alerts them to money transfers. The US wants to cut Iranian banks out of the SWIFT system, in effect making it practically impossible for anyone inside or outside Iran to send or receive funds.
Who knows what Iran will do if this comes to pass? It will probably just join non-aligned countries to create an alternative SWIFT, further undermining the western grip on global finance. Iran, after all, decided last year not to put up with the prospect of perpetual cyberwar with the west, and is forging ahead with plans to create a closed internet system for itself.
Each step the US and EU take to hinder Iran’s flexibility is countered with an innovative solution – one that includes more and more non-western players who are keen to craft a new global order. They used to worry about that kind of confrontation with the west, but the collapse of the current order has left few obstacles in their paths – and even offers incentives.
Like the proverbial finger in the dyke to block a leak…the water will always find another way out and possibly even bust open the dam. A warning to Washington: the burden of anxiety will always fall on the one who needs the dam most.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow her on twitter @snarwani.
“In the financial world, the United States cannot order SWIFT to kick Iran out. But it has leverage in that it can punish the Brussels-based organization’s board of directors individually, possibly freezing their assets or limiting their travel.”
February 17, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | BRIC, European Union, Goldman Sachs, India, Iran, United States, United States Department of Treasury |
2 Comments
“We must hit, hit and hit them incessantly – not by means of large-scale war. Suddenly someone disappears there, someone is found dead here and somewhere else someone is found stabbed to death in a European nightclub.” – Ariel Sharon
Monday. February 13. 3.54 pm. A bomb explodes in the car of an Israeli diplomat. Three people, including the defence attaché’s wife Tal Yehoshua, are grievously injured.
30 minutes later, embassy officials are examining the remains of the vehicle in an area that has been cordoned off by the police.
Within three hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the Hizbullah and Iran: “Iran, which stands behind these attacks, is the largest exporter of terror in the world. The Israeli government and its security forces will continue to work together with local security services against these terrorist actions.”
He is pre-empting the inquiry, and the media is already talking about “Hizbullah in Delhi” and “Israel targeted in India”. We are calling ourselves a soft state when our own hardliners and security forces have been killing citizens inside the country.
The question is not whether global terror is being fought on Indian soil but how much of it is being arranged here. If it is legitimate to ask about the role of local handlers, then why has there been no concern about the incident of a planned vengeance by Israelis?
Cut to a report a few days ago when there was palpable revenge. The couple, Shneor Zalman and Yaffa Shenoi, arrived in India on a multiple-entry visa in March 2010. After the visa expired, they went back and returned within a month. What was their purpose that they paid a “disproportionately high rent” of Rs. 50,000 a month for a house in Fort Kochi, Kerala? A senior official was quoted in a report saying: “Central intelligence got an alert about a covert operation being carried out by suspected Israeli agents after the 26/11 Mumbai terror strike in which south Mumbai’s Chabad House came under attack and six Jews, including a Rabbi and his pregnant wife, were killed. We have traced the couple’s financial transactions. They will be questioned before they are deported. Preliminary investigations suggest some Israelis are camping in various parts of the country.”
This comes from official sources and all that they think of is deporting the couple. There has been complete silence from the usually active dispensers of opinion, too.
Let us return to the scene of Monday’s crime. The Indian and international media have gone ballistic about it without a shred of evidence. If the argument is that the Indian prime minister’s house is in the vicinity and reveals lapses in our security, then why is no one apprehensive about our situation? It raises questions beyond safety measures. Why are we falling in line with Israeli rules? What is the American effort in this proxy war? It is not Hizbullah that is fighting in India, but Israel.
With the top leaders’ comments, Israel is not only holding India to ransom but also trying to play its victim-aggressor game here. A bomb that went off simultaneously in Georgia was defused, for it does not resonate well with the anti-Arab/Iran narrative. One is not condoning any such attacks, but this most certainly does not look like a war against Israel, a state that has got its armour in place. Mossad is as pervasive as the CIA.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “It just shows that Israel and its citizens face terror inside and outside of Israel. We deal with it every day. We know how to identify exactly who is responsible for the attack and who carried it out. We will not allow this to affect our agenda.”
Has anyone questioned the agenda? The identification process assumes reprisal.
Blindly accepting the Israeli version of domestic links with groups will obviously lead to the blanket indictment of ‘jihadi’ organisations, many of them imagined entities of the right-wing parties. Is it not possible that some Hindutva terror groups now openly asserting themselves and held culpable for such activities could be used for Israel’s covert operations? Israel does not have suicide missions, but it understands the masochism paradigm only too well.
***
The revenge space is never empty. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written:
“The primitive sense of the just…starts from the notion that a human life…is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another’s act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act – a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts.”
We need to look at a few examples to emphasise our vulnerability.
Members of the orthodox Jewish Chabad India Trust have moved out of Nariman House and are residing in an unknown location due to security reasons. Soon after the Mumbai attacks, six members of a group called Zaka (acronym for Zihuy Korbanot Ason – Disaster Victim Identification) arrived in the city to collect and arrange the body parts and blood of Jews so that they could be returned to family members and were afforded a dignified burial according to Jewish law. The police investigations were not completed.
More recently, Israeli national Nurit Toker was booked by the Mumbai police under the Arms Act, 1959, for carrying two live cartridges in her backpack while travelling from Mumbai to Kathmandu. In her petition she mentioned that she had completed her compulsory three-year training in the Israeli army and these were her personal ammunition, compatible with the M-16 assault rifle acquired during her military training. She had not carried the rifle, though. Sec. 3 clearly states “there is no requirement of use or intention to use the arm or ammunition” to pursue the case. Yet, the Israel Consulate intervened to say that the accused had accidentally left bullets in her bag.
This is not the first such instance. In 2006, Noa Haviv had cleared customs at Mumbai airport as well as the security agencies of Israeli airline El Al at Tel Aviv and arrived with 16 bullets and a magazine in her check-in baggage. The Israeli consul general had stated then: “We have every reason to believe that it was an innocent mistake. She had borrowed this suitcase from her brother, who is a licensed weapons holder. She was not aware of the bullets inside when she packed her bags.” Amazingly, only the airline filed a case and not the Airports Authority of India or the security agencies of the government.
In a country that arrests whole families on mere “tip offs”, this leniency is alarming. Worse, all 171 passengers on the El Al flight had walked out of the green channel and cleared customs in 15 minutes. Why this express service? Even Indians returning from a holiday take longer. The customs official at the time had said, “…this was a flight coming from Israel, where security measures are stringent.”
Are we to depend on another state’s security assurances? Israel is not above suspicion. No country is.
***
The attack on the embassy staff took place in India. We cannot allow investigations to be outsourced. Hillary Clinton offered US assistance to probe into “these cowardly acts” because the “scourge of terrorism is an affront to the entire international community”.
In an editorial, The Pioneer uses this incident for its grand-standing: “Governments around the world are mindful of such occasions when Israelis, both diplomats and civilians, are likely be targeted; sadly, the Government of India chooses to ignore them, busy as the Home Minister is defending himself in a corruption case while intelligence agencies are pre-occupied with snooping on the Congress’s political opponents and conducting ‘surveys’ in election-bound States”. It adds, with alacrity, that at least the people should be agitated “if not the Government whose Ministers are at the moment unabashedly pandering to Muslim extremism in Uttar Pradesh”.
Are we to be on our toes for Israel? Why did the papers not write editorials when suspicious activities of Israelis were noticed by these intelligence agencies? Why suppress those?
As expected, Pakistan and its Inter Services Intelligence are used as an example. There has been no proof. Israel is using Indian susceptibility with regard to relationship with Pakistan. There is indeed an insurgency problem and the recent history of the Mumbai attacks. The fact that the Jewish Chabad House was one of the targets makes it appear as a legitimate connection. But Pakistan has closer ties with Saudi Arabia and is inimical to Iran, which is the current bone stuck in the throats of the western powers and Israel.
There are cursory references to the four Iranian nuclear scientists who were killed in the last two years. Instead, the bomb blast is being touted as revenge for the death of Hizbullah’s military chief Imad Mughniyeh in a car explosion. What is so important about the fourth death anniversary? Do also note that he was killed in Syria, so Israel has a virtual buffet meal at its disposal to point fingers at.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”
There are sniggers, but Israel has every reason to perpetuate such mind-numbing ideas, if not actions. In 1948, Menachem Begin’s unit slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for their allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. He had declared, “We must hit, hit and hit them incessantly – not by means of large-scale war. Suddenly someone disappears there, someone is found dead here and somewhere else someone is found stabbed to death in a European nightclub.”
The history if Israel is as damning as it is damaged. It has flouted every rule and yet got the benefit of protection.
India is most certainly not a soft power that some of our own commentators are shamelessly projecting it as. It is a bit obsessed and still suffers from a colonial hangover. It has created its cocoon of goodwill based on the flimsy delusion of being a developed nation where hybrid progress is sustained in a greenhouse. In that, it is not too different from some of the wealthy Arab states that are only concerned about how they sell their oil and for how much. Just as they have their pecking order, India maintains a stoical distance from the larger pool of South Asian countries by virtue of its “close relations” with those who matter.
Self-preservation is the goal of any society, but when it becomes opportunistic it is difficult to demarcate the lines of control and of control freaks. By a process of natural selection that imbues it as a ‘doctrinaire liberal’ society, India is being co-opted in an unholy war
Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer. She can be reached at http://farzana-versey.blogspot.in/
February 15, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | India, Israel, Mumbai |
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New Delhi: In spite of sanctions by the US and the European Union and Israel linking Tehran to the attack on an Israeli embassy car here, India is set to step up its energy and business ties with Iran, with a commerce ministry team going there shortly to explore new opportunities. […]
Not just oil, India is also stepping up the refurbishing of the Chabahar Port in Iran and a strategic railway link that will offer it direct access to Afghanistan and the energy-rich Central Asia. […]
India is uneasy at Israeli accusations about Iran’s hand in the Monday bombing that targeted an Israeli embassy car, badly injuring the wife of the Israeli defence attache. India, the sources said, does not want to be drawn into a diplomatic war of words between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Iran has rubbished Israeli charges as “empty lies”.
But with Israel launching a diplomatic offensive and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) asking India to scale down its engagement with Iran, New Delhi could come under renewed pressure from the West to cut off ties with what the Americans say is a rogue regime.
India has launched a probe into the terror attack. “The probe is on,” is all Indian officials would say.
Ajai Sahni, a terrorism expert, said it was very unlikely that the attack would ever be traced to the Iranian state. But he agreed that India could be under extra pressure as Israel may leverage the incident to portray Iran as a rogue regime.
The American Jewish Congress has told Indian ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao that it was “deeply troubled” by India’s efforts to intensify trade relations with Iran “at the very moment when the US and fellow democracies are applying new economic pressures” on Tehran. […]
Last week, as the European Union asked India to broker talks with Tehran over its atomic programme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for a resolution of the issue by giving “maximum scope” to diplomacy. – Full article
February 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | American Jewish Congress, India, Iran |
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No deaths, just long sought after provocations; a geopolitical gambit executed with the proficiency of Mossad.
“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ”
-US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.
~
“U.S. officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on U.S. soil. But Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said the thwarted plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”
The warning about Iran’s more aggressive stance was included in written testimony that Clapper submitted to Congress on Tuesday as part of the intelligence community’s annual assessment of the nation’s most serious security threats.”
– “Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds,” Washington Post, January 31, 2012
~
“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” read the memo, with soft sites interpreted to mean potential targets such as synagogues and other Jewish community buildings. The letter was circulated by the head of security for Israel’s Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States, ABC News said.”
-“‘Soft’ Target Threat Gets Community’s Attention,” The Jewish Week, February 7, 2012
Quite clearly, there is a premeditated conspiracy working ceaselessly to provoke Iran into a war it neither wants nor will benefit from in any conceivable way, and upon failing to provoke Iran, provocations will be manufactured in their stead, as seen in the recently botched “plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on US soil,” later revealed to be a US sting operation involving DEA agents and a duped, entrapped patsy.
Now Israel is blaming two attacks on their own embassies, one in New Delhi, India and another failed attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, squarely on Iran. There were only minor injuries reported in the New Delhi attack which was carried out in a similar manner to those targeting Iranian scientists in Iran – attacks now admittedly the work of Israeli Mossad agents and US-funded, armed, trained, and harbored Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists.
Iran clearly has nothing to gain by bombing Israeli targets abroad, especially in nations like India where such an act would not only give the West the provocation it is on record trying to “goad” out of Tehran for years, but also one that would unsettle relations with India which would directly effect the conflict in Afghanistan festering on Iran’s eastern border.
Conversely, a non-lethal attack on Israeli targets gives the Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv corporate-financier elite the exact provocation they have been fishing for on record since at least 2009. Reuters reports, “a bomb wrecked a car carrying the wife of the Israeli Defence attache as she was going to pick up her children from school.” All the emotional plot points exist to manipulate public opinion against Iran, and behind a Western attack that has so far been perpetually stalled by a world increasingly irate over the West’s global warmongering.
The degree to which this likely stunt will be successful in serving as a pretext for war (or at least further escalation) for an axis that has been waging a campaign of terror against Iran for years remains to be seen. This Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv axis has openly admitted they seek to provoke war with an unwilling adversary, and all three are experts at manufacturing provocations for otherwise unjustifiable acts of aggression.
Iran is an aggressive though not reckless nation – so says the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution in their own “Which Path to Persia?” report. Iran does not lack an accurate understanding of global public opinion, evident in their English news service, PressTV. Should Iran choose to finally strike out against the West for their blatant and consistent acts of war, they would most likely do so with global public opinion in mind – likely excluding the possibility of targeting a mother on her way to pick up her children from school.
As in any crime, big or small, the first and most pressing question to answer is, “cui bono” or, “to whose benefit?” An axis of Western powers desperately seeking a pretext for a war they’ve tried to start for years? Or a nation desperately trying to avoid war, weathering constant and overt acts of aggression directed at their economy, infrastructure, civilians, military leaders, and politicians, only to end up bombing an Israeli mother on her way to pick up her children from school? With this in mind, and with Iran squarely denying any responsibility for the attacks, the burden of proof lies entirely on Israel.
February 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | India, Iran, Israel |
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Massive protest demonstrations have broken out in the Indian-administered Kashmir over the death of a young man allegedly killed by Indian army soldiers.
Protesters on Saturday blocked the main highway to Baramullah district, situated 75 kilometers (46 miles) northwest of Srinagar, the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir, and said they will not bury the body of the slain individual — identified as 22-year-old Ashiq Hussain Rather — until the soldiers involved in his killing were arrested.
Police resorted to baton charges and used teargas to try to disperse the protesters.
Hussain was killed on Friday outside his home in the Lasser village of Baramulla district.
“The (Indian) troopers shot Ashiq without any provocation,” said Muddasir Ahhamd, a relative of Rather’s, adding that, “After the incident, they tried to keep us indoors but ultimately they ran away when we raised hue and cry.”
Meanwhile, normal life was paralyzed in the Muslim-dominated areas of Indian-administered Kashmir on Saturday after a pro-freedom group called for a shutdown. The strike call was issued by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) on the 28th execution anniversary of its founder, Mohammed Maqbool Bhat.
Hundreds of paramilitary troopers and policemen were deployed to Srinagar to impose restrictions and prevent protest rallies.
Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full and have fought two wars over the region since 1947. New Delhi has been repeatedly criticized for resorting to force rather than finding a diplomatic solution to the dispute.
In 2010, the Kashmir Valley was rocked by a series of protests in which at least 110 people were reported killed. The protest rallies were sparked when Indian forces shot dead a student in June of that year.
February 12, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | India, Kashmir, Srinagar |
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Finally, India is getting its act together in its Iran policy. The ‘breaking news’ that India proposes to robustly explore expanding its trade with Iran signals a new approach to stepping up oil imports from Iran while at the same time rectifying the imbalance in trade, which heavily favours Iran traditionally, and to make this happen within a paradigm that resolves the current problem over the payment mechanism.
The new thinking is an acknowledgement of Iran’s importance as a strategic partner. That is where the rub lies. Delhi has lumped far too long the blackmail tactic by Washington with the malicious intention to erode India’s ties with Iran. Indeed, as result, for no real fault of Tehran, the India-Iran relationship suffered needless setbacks in the recent years.
Delhi should never accept that this is a zero sum game – India’s relationships with the US and Iran respectively. Iran is far too important a regional power in India’s extended neighbourhood to be neglected. There is no need to dilate on this thought.
Other Asian countries like Japan, South Korea or Malaysia have successfully managed to have positive relationships with both Iran and the GCC states. Also, GCC states themselves have maintained highly nuanced relationships with Iran. In a long term perspective, it is far from inevitable that Iran’s rise is an irreconcilable eventuality for the GCC states.
Much of the present-day tensions in the Persian Gulf is also to be attributed to the imperial policy of ‘divide-and-rule’ that the West continues to pursue in the region for the sake of perpetuating their hegemony. Finally, the US-Iran standoff itself is increasingly becoming unsustainable if Washington is to optimally develop a regional strategy. The point is, Iran has already bolted away.
China sees all these trends very clearly and is successfully developing a multi-tiered regional strategy that creates space for pursuing fruitful relations with Iran and GCC – and even Israel – alike.
Indeed, it is also best for a healthy US-India partnership that it is an equal relationship where neither side takes undue advantage or tries to browbeat or resorts to prescriptive approaches and arm-twisting. In this case, the US policy toward Iran also happens to be vacuous, lacking sincerity of purpose; it is opaque and brittle – and increasingly, US comes to realise that even its European allies are reluctant to follow its lead. Therefore, it is simply appalling that US has chosen to harbour expectations of dictating to Delhi the directions and content of its Iran policy.
Of course, the American side is not to bear the entire blame, either. Somehow, the Indian elites (including bureaucrats) and strategic pundits have come to develop an atavistic fear that US-Indian partnership is highly perishable unless Delhi keeps harmonising its policies with the US global strategies even by sacrificing its interests. This sort of inferiority complex is completely unwarranted.
The heart of the matter is that the US is a highly experienced practitioner of diplomacy. If it began abandoning its historic cussedness toward India sometime during Bill Clinton administration’s second term, it was because Washington saw the growth potential of India and the great possibilities that would arise for a beneficial relationship.
Even today, that consideration is the prime mover of the US polices toward India. It is a well-known fact that after being grumpy for a few weeks after India spurned the US offer for the 10-billion dollar multi-purpose aircraft tender, Washington moved on.
We could also learn from the Americans – how doggedly they keep pursuing their regional strategies through the Afghan endgame, no matter what Delhi thinks of it. Suffice to say, the high probability is that India’s Iran policy may displease Washington for a while and then life will move on. As for the fear complex of the Indian elites or pundits, it is borne more out of their own insecurities vis-a-vis the US establishment and it should remain their private affair.
February 3, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | India, Iran |
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