U.S. President’s move against Iran nuclear deal imposes an additional burden on India’s Link West policy in general and the Chabahar project in particular – Analyse.
Refer - The Hindu
IAS Parliament 7 years
KEY POINTS
Issue
· U.S President decided to not issue a certification mandated by a U.S law, for the country’s continuing participation in the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) that Tehran and six world powers reached in 2015.
· The President is required to issue this certification every 90 days.
· According to U.S president’s Iran strategy, U.S will increase sanctions on Iran to ensure it can no longer “finance terror”, while refusing to certify its nuclear programme as required.
· For India, the revival of the US-Iran spat is likely to have geopolitical and geo-economics repercussions.
Implications
· Trade with Iran, which is already constrained by previous U.S. sanctions will be very hard to enlarge.
· As the second largest importer of crude from Iran, India will be haunted by the spectre of having to drastically reduce its supplies again, just as it was forced to in the pre-JCPOA period.
· This will ultimately affect the India’s link west policy.
· If Iran is unable to conduct more trade, it will have less incentive to focus on the new Chabahar port over the pre-existing trade through Bandar Abbas.
· This would certainly impact India’s plans for connectivity to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
· U.S’s South Asia policy for Afghanistan and policy on Iran, are at odds with each other.
· It also remains to be seen whether U.S. administration would countenance Indian investment in Chabahar, the development of the railways through to Zahedan, and regular trade through Iran in order to increase assistance to Afghanistan, as the U.S.’s South Asia policy encourages, given the tough language it has employed in its Iran strategy.
· There is a silver lining, where U.S. secretary of state signaled that, despite bilateral problems with Tehran, the United States had nothing against legitimate business with Iran.
