“Iran’s policy towards India and China has matured. It sought this “ostpolitik” to balance the rivalries it was facing on its Western coast and at the global level. It looked at Pakistan as an extension of the danger it felt from across the Gulf and grew close to India to create a regional balance in its favour.”__________________________
(April 29, Islamabad, Sri Lanka Guardian) The visit of the Iranian president Mr Mahmud Ahmadinejad to Islamabad may be the first step towards inaugurating a new chapter in Iran’s geopolitical vision. And the reason behind this could be Iran’s economic compulsions: it has a resource that needs to be exported to develop its national economy to the level where it can be recognised as a regional power. In an era of pipelines, geopolitics is no longer linked to invasions. From the point of view of trade, westwards of Iran, the markets for its product are small; eastwards, it has the world’s biggest “demand area” willing to pay the price Iran wants for its gas. This could be the big occasion for Iran after the Achamaenid moment in history in the 6th century BC.
Iran looked westwards in the past because of history, much of it ancient and most of it adversarial. Its vision of power grew out of its longing for a capacity to defend itself or to spread its influence. That is gradually changing and it is changing because of the markets, not the battlefields, regardless of what is happening in Iraq. Now it looks at South Asia, not as an ancient cultural outreach bedimmed increasingly by the rise of local civilisation, but as a colossal market with the ability to respond to Iran’s needs. South Asia will not only buy its gas at levels Iran can’t imagine selling elsewhere, it has the capacity to invest in Iran and transfer technology in areas where others will not help.
The change has come gradually after the germination of the idea of a pipeline transporting Iranian gas from its western Pars gasfield to Pakistan and India. Tehran went through a number of contradictory phases in its approach to the project, as did Pakistan and India. But Iran has now understood the importance of elevating economic interests above ideological revolution. Pakistan has also revised its misplaced military-oriented view of its “geopolitical importance” and India has reinterpreted its security doctrines facing westwards to Pakistan and beyond. With oil prices touching $120 per barrel and food becoming scarce globally, South Asia has been jolted into taking another look at its view of itself as a bread basket.
Iran’s policy towards India and China has matured. It sought this “ostpolitik” to balance the rivalries it was facing on its Western coast and at the global level. It looked at Pakistan as an extension of the danger it felt from across the Gulf and grew close to India to create a regional balance in its favour. But because of its India-centric worldview, Pakistan was compelled to look at this with suspicion. Now that security concern is changing with the rapidly forming political consensus in Pakistan’s civil society about normalisation of relations with India. Indeed, Pakistan’s geopolitical view of itself as an “obstruction” is changing fast and it has been seeking India’s cooperation on the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline without linking it to the “Kashmir issue” as it did when the project was first mooted.
With India and China investing heavily in Iran’s natural resources and infrastructure — and China investing in the natural resources and coastal development in Pakistan — Iran’s “go east” strategy could finally bear fruit. Hopefully Pakistan will in time break free from its security obsession with India to accept Indian investments and thus complete a regional economic map that is more real than the RCD (Regional Cooperation for Development) that Pakistan originally organised unsuccessfully in the 1960s with Iran and Turkey in an effort to break free from its South Asian geography. Today newspapers are already talking about Iran joining the SAARC. When that happens, Iran will easily become one of its most important states, given its potential to increase the so-far abysmal intra-regional trade. A few years ago one couldn’t even think of Afghanistan becoming a full member, which now it is.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s visit to Islamabad will highlight areas in which the two countries can move forward. An increase in the electricity supply from Iran through Balochistan and Sindh is very much on the cards. The IPI could also take off after years of adjustment in the three countries’ differing views of one another. Pakistan has realised that “obstruction” does not bestow geopolitical dividends; India has overcome its lack of trust of Pakistan as a middleman and certainly doesn’t want to be exclusively dependent on its nuclear deal with the US for its energy needs; and Iran is more confident than ever before that its economic future lies eastward in the direction of the world’s largest energy market, which includes China. A circular argument — does security lead to economic relations or vice versa? — seems finally to be coming to an end.
(Courtesy - Daily Times)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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