As many of India's concerns were struck on by Congressional and Senatorial members, they retained their concern on Iran's nuclear program. In the final draft, the bill calls for a presidential determination that will give Congress "a description and assessment of the specific measures that India has taken to fully and actively participate in the U.S. and international efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction..."
This is an area of concern as to how the wording will be interpreted and needs addressing in the " 1-2-3 Agreement that will contain India's list of obligations. While India has publicly stated that it does not want to see yet another nuclear weapons state in its neighborhood (and specifically Iran), it has also said that it wants Iran to enjoy the benefits of the NPT as it expects it to abide by its (Iran's) international promises. This is a heavily loaded statement that while it approves of Iran enriching nuclear fuel for civilian use only (as allowed by the NPT regime), it also expects Iran to abide by the disclosure, inspection, civilian restriction, and safety clauses of NPT. While Indian politicians have been portraying its vote against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a measure to stop the reference to the UN Security Council, the truth is that the nation does not approve of the secretive sale of nuclear weapons technology by disgraced Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan to Iran. Nor does it want Pakistan to be allowed to get away with this covert operation.
At the same time, while India disapproves of this sly action, it also does not want to take a black-white position against Iran with which it has civilization, economic, political, and historical ties. It is not bound by the diplomatic limitations that the US has with Tehran and would like to exploit the proximity with Iran to gain from its rich natural gas resource. India also wants to expand ties with Iran to find access to Central Asia. Hence, giving up Iran is not an option that India wants to exercise.
The instability in West Asia created by the US occupation of Iraq, the abrogation of Israeli-Palestinian peace process by Iranian supported Hamas, the breakdown of law and order by Syrian supported Hezbollah in Lebanon has vastly complicated political equations for India. India has friendly ties with all these nations and wants to expand relations with them but is unable to because of ground realities. Adding to this is resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, capitulation of Islamabad to the Pakistani Taliban, an erosion of European support to the war on terror, rejection of US unilateralism and aggressive confrontationist foreign policy by the American public, and a general anti-American feeling in West Asia has further muddled the wiggle space for India (and perhaps even for the US).
Thus, even though confronted with circumstantial evidence of surreptitious procurement of nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan, Iran does not feel obliged to cave in. Given this context, Tehran knows that the US is unlikely to invade Iran or even have nominal support from their European allies for such an invasion or attack. That is precisely the reason why there is a diplomatic package being worked out by the European powers trying to entice Tehran to stop its enrichment is in fact encouraging it to act more irresponsibly. Hence, policy makers in Tehran are playing hardball bargaining for even more of a deal. Even if it does accept these enticements, there is also a distinct possibility that they may actually develop a nuclear bomb.
What would the US and its European allies do-invade, rocket attacks, air bombing? Would Israel then declare itself a nuclear power prompting Iran's Sunni rivals Saudi Arabia to follow suit? What would India do if this was the scenario? Should it accept the Iranian bomb or all the other powers in the region? If India is not willing to accept another NWS in its neighborhood, how will it react to three more in its immediate vicinity?
This is exactly, the situation that India should avoid and therefore cooperate to create enough peaceful means by which Iran may be dissuaded from becoming a NWS. Learning from Russia and China, it should counsel dialogue, support the EU-3 initiative, balance out hard-line statements, and privately counsel Iran to lower its rhetoric. If India wants to a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it needs to behave like one and take on more responsibility for peaceful dialogue and conflict resolution.
In negotiating the " 1-2-3 Agreement," India must carefully position itself to adhere to multi-lateral bodies such as the UN and not necessarily decisions of regional or military groupings.
