The ripples in the bilateral India-Iran relationship have once again surfaced, forcing questioning whether India's policy and commitment to the development of the Chabahar port project are crumbling.
Three days after Iran's announcement that it was finally beginning to work alone on a crucial rail link between Zahedan and Chabahar that India had promised to jointly develop in 2016, the Foreign Ministry in Delhi was forced to clarify that, in fact, Tehran was left to nominate an entity authorized to finalize pending technical and financial matters, after a meeting between the two parties in December 2019 to review the railway project.
For most analysts of the India-Iran relationship, Tehran's statement that it would go alone, apparently because India had shuffled, was similar to a challenge, seeking a reaffirmation of India's commitment to the development of Chabahar, and Yet another example of the kind of tough bargaining Iran does with India from time to time.
In the context of a deadly pandemic, for which China is already on the table, and subsequently India's efforts to garner international support against Beijing for its adventure in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh, Tehran's comments placed Delhi in a diplomatic enigma in which both Beijing and Washington are key players.
Iran's declaration to start working alone on the rail line came after reports of a 25-year, $ 400 billion mega-Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership negotiated between China and Iran that paves the way for Tehran to buy weapons. and Beijing military equipment.
The two countries already have a current trade agreement, also signed in 2016, just a few months before the Chabahar Trade and Transport Corridor Agreement between Iran, Afghanistan and India. And now, even if there is internal (led by populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's parliament) and international opposition to such an association, Delhi needs to develop a better strategy on Iran beyond waiting to see how the United States will react, beyond having than issuing clarifications in response to Iran's sudden provocations, and beyond allowing association gaps that China will easily fill.
Since the 2016 trilateral transport corridors agreement designed to facilitate trade in markets throughout the Central Asia region, with the port of Chabahar at its center, bilateral ties between India and Iran have been tested by a On the one hand, due to Tehran's increasing proximity to Beijing as a geostrategic challenge for India and, on the other hand, due to the sometimes awkward balance of Delhi's relations with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, even at the expense of maintain crucial regional associations.
From NDTV News
No comments:
Post a Comment