US
“Coerced” India Over Iran
By Kranti Kumara
21 February, 2007
World
Socialist Web
In
a public speech Stephen G. Rademaker, a former US Assistant Secretary
of State for Nonproliferation and International Security, boasted in
New Delhi last week that the United States “coerced” India
into voting against Iran at recent International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) meetings and warned that Washington may soon present India with
an even starker choice.
Rademaker delivered an address
to the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, a “think-tank”
funded by the Indian Ministry of Defence, February 15 on “Iran,
North Korea and the future of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)”.
The former Bush administration
official claimed that the July 2005 Indo-US nuclear accord had resulted
in a big change in India’s attitude towards what he termed “non-proliferation.”
Translated into plain English this means that the US has made the nuclear
agreement contingent upon India siding with the US in its attempt to
bully Iran over its nuclear program and fully intends to use the accord
to exact further concessions from India.
Commenting on the Indian
votes at IAEA meetings in September 2005 and February 2006, Rademaker
declared, “The best illustration of this is the two votes India
cast against Iran at the IAEA. I am the first person to admit that the
votes were coerced.”
Rademeker’s provocative
comments were initially reported only in the Hindu of February 16. A
day later, the Times of India also carried the story.
As of the beginning of this
week, there had been no response to Redemaker’s comments either
from officials of the Indian government or from the leaders of the opposition
parties, including the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist),
which, even while providing India’s Congress Party-led United
Progressive Alliance government with the parliamentary votes needed
to remain in office, has sharply criticized India’s two votes
against Iran and warned that Washington is seeking to use the Indo-US
nuclear accord to harness India to its predatory and bellicose geo-political
designs.
The current US ambassador
to India, David Mulford, has, for his part, hastened to distance the
US government from Redemaker. Said Mulford, “It has always been
the US position that India will make decisions on the Iran issue based
on its own national interests. We respect the government of India’s
decisions on this matter. Redemaker is not a US official and the statements
attributed to him are inaccurate.”
Such denials coming from
an official who has himself become notorious for his repeated provocative
interventions in Indian affairs carry little, if any, weight. In January
2006, Mulford publicly warned that the Indo-US nuclear accord would
“die” if India failed to support the US position against
Iran at the upcoming IAEA meeting.
Earlier this month, as India’s
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjee was departing for a two-day
trip to Tehran, Mulford told the press that he was watching the visit
with “interest.” The ambassador added that he wanted to
ascertain if any Indo-Iranian agreements would result in India violating
the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act—
US legislation that threatens
any foreign firm that invests more than $40 million in the development
of Iran’s petroleum resources with financial penalties.
The Bush administration has
repeatedly publicly urged India to forego plans to build a pipeline
to import Iranian natural gas via Pakistan. New Delhi, however, sees
this project as both economically and politically rewarding, since it
would underpin the current attempt to conclude a comprehensive peace
settlement with Pakistan The pipeline deal was high on Mukherjee’s
agenda for his Tehran visit. Earlier this month Indian Prime Minster
Manmohan Singh, who at the time the nuclear accord with the US was first
initialed dismissed the pipeline deal as a far-off venture, enthusiastically
touted its benefits.
The rival ambitions underlying the Indo-US nuclear accord
Under the Indo-US nuclear
accord, Washington has pledged to help forge a unique status for India
within the world nuclear regulatory regime, making it eligible to receive
civilian nuclear fuel and technology from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers
Group even though it is not a signatory to the NPT.
Such “special status”
is highly coveted by the Indian elite for several reasons: because it
exemplifies the US’s readiness to forge a strategic partnership
with India and, in the words of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
“help” India to become a “world-power”; because
India is hoping to reduce its dependence on energy imports by developing
nuclear power; and because access to civilian nuclear fuel and technology
exports will enable India to concentrate the resources of its own nuclear
program on building its nuclear-weapon arsenal.
While the Indian elite looks
at the nuclear accord as propelling it into the realm of a world-power,
the Bush administration and US geo-political establishment by contrast
see it as cementing a strategic partnership in which India will play
the role of satrap—that is, India will be expected to accommodate
to and serve US imperialist ambitions in the Middle East and Asia.
“In the end,”
continued Redemaker, “India did not vote the wrong way.”
India’s votes against Iran had “paved the way for the Congressional
vote on the civilian nuclear proposal last year”—a reference
to legislation adopted by the US Congress last December that amends
the 1952 US Energy Act so as to facilitate the Bush administration plan
to grant India “special status” within the world nuclear
regulatory framework.
But, and this was no doubt
the key point of Redemaker’s “non-official” speech,
the Bush administration is far from finished with its efforts to “coerce”
India into doing its bidding against Iran: “More is going to be
required [of India] because the problems of Iran and North Korea have
not been solved.”
Redemaker then repeated the
Bush Administration’s charge that Iran is developing nuclear weapons,
without presenting a shred of proof.
He asserted that the “international
community” will have to implement additional measures to persuade
Iran to change course, while observing that Russia, whose president
just visited India so as to revitalize the longstanding Indo-Russian
military and geo-political alliance, is not fully siding with the US
against Tehran.
“Whether there will
be more UN sanctions or more measures taken outside the UN context,
we’ll have to see,” Redemaker said.
India’s UPA government
and the Indian elite find themselves on a strategic tightrope.
They have pursued closer
relations with China, Russia and Iran, even while accepting “favours”
from the US, which has made no secret of the fact that it expects India
to support its efforts to politically and economically isolate Iran
and to serve as a strategic counterweight to a rising China.
India’s elite has gambled
that it can navigate through the shifting and increasingly turbulent
seas of world politics, but now finds itself facing the imminent prospect
of having to make a choice with tremendous long-term implications for
India’s role in world affairs and its access to the energy reserves
needed to fuel India’s economic growth.
New Delhi’s suggestions
that it could act as a mediator between Tehran and Washington have been
met by the Bush administration with a contemptuous silence. Instead,
as indicated by Mulford’s recent remarks, the US is stepping up
its efforts to scuttle the Iranian pipe line project.
Tehran, meanwhile, has sweetened
its offer to India. It is guaranteeing the sale to India of natural
gas at half the current international price. The attraction of the project
for India is compounded by Russian President Putin’s recent announcement
that the state-owned Gazprom energy monopoly is ready to take a leading
role in financing and building the India-Pakistan-Iran pipeline.
“[If] the U.N. Security
Council acts against Iran,” Redemaker told his New Delhi audience
last week, “this would make things easier for countries like India.
But if things go in the direction of increasing economic pressure by
a coalition of countries like the US, Europe and Japan, India will have
to make a choice.
“It is India’s
prerogative to decide, but should it [not join], it would be a big mistake
and a lost opportunity.”
Redemaker claimed that for
India to pullout of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project “would
send a strong message to Iran, while not hurting India’s economic
interests.”
Ominously he continued: “[What]
happens if there is an incident in Kashmir?” implying that the
US would not hesitate to utilize the Indo-Pakistani geo-political rivalry
to bully India to fall into line.
These threats were combined
with flattery. Redemaker urged India’s elite to stop thinking
of themselves as leaders of a “third-world-country” and
instead align themselves with the “first-world,” i.e. the
traditional imperialist powers, the US, the EU countries and Japan.
The stark choices facing
the Indian elite with respect to its relations with US will undoubtedly
cause great turmoil and much soul-searching within the Indian ruling
elite.
For the international working
class, Washington’s campaign to intimidate India in preparation
for further aggression against Iran must be seen as testament to the
recklessness and desperation of a US elite intent on averting the erosion
of its economic power through wars and threats of wars and as underlining,
therefore, the urgency of reviving the antiwar movement on a socialist
and internationalist perspective.