India’s proposed $100 million investment in Iran’s Chabahar port is a pragmatic move and holds the key to protecting Indian national interest. Located at the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Oman Sea, the port allows India to sidestep a hostile Pakistan and have direct access to Afghanistan. It also gives India the ability to despatch goods and supplies, and if necessary even troops, straight to Afghanistan via Iran. This will be invaluable for India especially after U.S.-led Nato troops withdraw from Afghanistan beginning early 2014. For landlocked Afghanistan too, a fully developed Chabahar port will reduce the country’s dependence on Pakistan which maintains a virtual monopoly over Afghanistan’s sea-borne transit trade and can be trusted upon to exploit it to the full post-2014, possibly in association with China, which has been allowed to operate Pakistan’s Gwadar port.

 

Gwadar will provide Chinese ships sustained anchorage in an area on the edge of the Arabian Sea, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, through which the bulk of the world’s energy supplies pass. In that respect, India’s participation in upgrading the Chabahar port has deep geopolitical resonance. Insofar as this would reinforce New Delhi’s strategic ties with Tehran and Kabul, it is a timely and welcome move designed to promote the interests of all three countries in an environment which the Pakistan-China tie-up was threatening to disturb. The cash-surplus Kandla and Jawaharlal Nehru ports will develop and operate cargo terminals at Chabahar.

 

If, despite these geo-strategic advantages, the West scoffs at India’s Iranian dalliance, it deserves to be ignored. While India does share Western concerns about Iran’s civilian nuclear program, those cannot trump its own national security concerns. The Americans think nothing of defying international codes and norms when they are in conflict with their national interest. It is time they be made to understand that others can do the same.
 

(Source: The New Indian Express)

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