Ehsan Ahrari-India and Iran sign

By Ehsan Ahrari
Global Beat Syndicate
(KRT)
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia – While next to no one was paying attention, reports from New Delhi tell us India and Iran have signed a strategic agreement with major, and highly destabilizing consequences.
Described recently by Defense News as a "startling new accord," the deal gives India the right to use Iranian military bases in the event of a war with neighboring Pakistan, while India will now provide Iran "military hardware, training, maintenance and modernization support." Pakistan will not only take note, but will surely reassess its own ties with neighboring Iran.
India has indeed pulled off a diplomatic and geopolitical coup. Several specific aspects of the new strategic accord are somewhat bizarre, given the extremely tense relations between India and Pakistan.
First, this agreement establishes closer military ties between India and Iran than ever before. Indian naval technicians will be stationed "at Iranian military bases to maintain and give mid-life upgrades to Iran’s MIG-29 fighters." Indian ordinance factory technicians will travel to Iran "to refit and maintain T-27 tanks, BMP infantry fighting vehicles, and 105 mm and 130 mm towed artillery guns." Indian and Iranian troops and navies will conduct "operational and combat training for warships and missile boats."
As if this were not enough to raise major alarm flags in Pakistan, the accord will enable India’s military planners "to quickly deploy troops, armored personnel carriers, tanks, light armored vehicles and surveillance platforms to Iran during crises with Pakistan." Given that the chief operational focus of India’s current rapid mobility capabilities "are aimed at defending the Indo-Pakistani borders," this particular feature of the Indo-Iranian strategic accord deprives Iran of any neutral role between the two South Asian rivals. In fact, Pakistan may now be forced to view Iran as a potential enemy. At the same, it provides India a major strategic advantage, and one likely to tilt a very delicate strategic balance further in favor of India.
Analysis of these closer Tehran-New Delhi ties makes clear that the two partners have very different, but equally significant needs that are being addressed. As a rising power, India has always found itself at a great disadvantage vis-à-vis China, which has received the lion’s share of attention and preference from every U.S. president – from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush has changed the nature of strategic dialogue in South Asia, labeling China as a strategic competitor and pursuing a strategic partnership with India. The seeds for that partnership were sown during the Clinton administration.
India would have continued to reap the benefits of Bush’s preference for it over China, had it not been for September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Since then, to India’s chagrin and dismay, Pakistan has emerged as a frontline U.S. ally.
Fortunately, from India’s point of view, Iran’s strategic options have been severely limited. Tehran was a victim of the U.S. policy of dual containment during the Clinton presidency, and after September 11, President Bush lumped Iran into his "axis of evil," along with North Korea and Iraq.
After the collapse of the Taliban government, Pakistan and Iran rejuvenated their ties. Iranian President Mohammed Khatami visited Pakistan last December, and during that trip and prior to it and afterward he continued to dangle the carrot of $3.5 billion pipelines in front of Pakistan. The pipelines would carry Iranian gas through Pakistan to India. Pakistan’s annual royalties from the proposed arrangement are expected to be around $500-600 million. But Khatami also emphasized that the gas pipelines cannot become a reality until India and Pakistan agree to resolve their mutual differences peacefully.
In the face of the new accord, what are Pakistan’s choices? Pakistani leaders will have to meet with their Iranian counterparts to get a clear sense of the real intentions of this new Indo-Iranian accord. Pakistan cannot allow Iran to do anything that alters the regional strategic balance so significantly in favor of India without taking countermeasures.
At present, Islamabad’s choices are limited. What works best to its advantage is the fact the political instability in Afghanistan and Central Asia in general is so evident that Pakistan’s present strategic disadvantages may be very temporary. And on the other side of the coin, it behooves Iran to ensure that Pakistan remains a friend and an ally.