EDITORIAL: In an important development first revealed by a dismayed Indian media, Iran has dropped that country from its Chabahar-Zahedan rail line project to be extended to Zarang in Afghanistan, finalizing a 25-year $ 400 billion "Comprehensive Plan for Cooperation" with China, which among other things, includes completion of the railway project by March 2022. It may be recalled that in 2016, India had signed an agreement with Iran for that project as part of a transit and transportation corridor linking India, Iran and Afghanistan. Four years on, the Indian Railways Construction Ltd., a state-owned company, had nothing to show on the ground. The US had given it waiver for the Chabahar Port and the railway line, yet New Delhi kept dilly-dallying, apparently, because of worries that the impetuous US President Donald Trump could withdraw the waiver at any point.
The project was a big deal for India. Besides touting it as a new transportation corridor for the landlocked Afghanistan, New Delhi had long wanted to have access to the resource-rich Central Asian Republics via Afghanistan, by-passing Pakistan with which it remains locked in confrontation over several outstanding issues of dispute, in particular the Kashmir question. That dream has failed to come to fruition due to India's otherwise arrogant rulers getting weak-kneed before the US and compromising their strategic independence. No wonder, in an implicit insult directed at New Delhi, Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan Mohammad Ali Hosseini has remarked that "when some foreign governments found reluctant in their relations with Iran and need other's permission for their even normal interactions, for sure they won't be capable of planning and implementing such long-term cooperation contracts." India and the 'other' seem to have ended up achieving the opposite of their respective goals within the regional context. Whilst withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal the US has re-imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic to punish it for challenging the region's status quo, India has had its attention focused on undermining its traditional rival, Pakistan.
The Iran-China agreement frustrates the efforts of both. Tehran should be able to get over the US sanctions with Beijing pouring investments worth billions of dollars over the next 25 years into many areas, including infrastructure, manufacturing, upgrading energy and transport facilities, refurbishing ports, refineries and other installations, in return for a commitment to receive oil and gas supplies during that period. As regards Pakistan, although Islamabad has been insisting all along that it viewed Chabahar as a complimentary rather than a rival port, India made no secret of its desire to make it a competitor of our strategically located deep-sea Gwadar Port, the centerpiece of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and a flagship project of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The new development has paved the way for greater cooperation among the three friendly neighbours. It did not come as mere rhetoric when ambassador Hosseini averred that the BRI and CPEC are suitable platforms for regional cooperation, especially for Iran, Pakistan and China, adding, it "can be a unique model of development not only for us, but as a model of cooperation for other countries in our region."
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020