MK Bhadrakumar

Former ambassador

The saving grace about the gathering storms in the Persian Gulf is that President Trump’s foreign policy is driven by the intersection of US domestic politics and his own calculus in the November 2020 presidential election. Getting into a military conflict with Iran will be bad politics for him — he would be aware of the embers of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 incinerating to ashes then President Jimmy Carter’s political career and legacy.

Yet, there is a flip side. Trump is waging a campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ — squeezing Iran with sanctions with a view to reducing its lifeblood of oil exports to zero — but he has no Plan B. And with Iran hitting back through ‘counter-escalation’, Trump is hard-pressed to respond. Meanwhile, the ‘hawks’ in his camp are queering the pitch of tensions leading toward a military conflict in which, they fantasise, Iran’s Islamic regime would perish. In sum, conditions are approaching criticality. The illegal seizure of an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar by the British navy 10 days ago had the hallmarks of an Anglo-American game plan to compel Tehran to react by force, which could be a casus belli that can be packaged to the public as sufficient justification for resort to arms.

On the pretext of ensuring the safety of oil tankers operating in the Persian Gulf, the US has initiated a plan to form a military coalition to safeguard shipping lanes off Iran. The plan envisages that the Pentagon would provide command and surveillance assets, while allied nations would patrol waters near the US command ships and escort commercial vessels through the waters between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. In essence, the US ships would take control of the two vital choke points of Strait of Hormuz (connecting the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf) and the Bab al-Mandab (connecting the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal via the Red Sea.) Indeed, the Strait of Hormuz bordering Iran and Oman is at its narrowest point — 21 nautical miles — which means that all vessels passing through the strait must traverse the territorial waters of these two countries.

Under international law, foreign warships have the right of innocent passage only during peacetime. The UNCLOS, which Iran has signed, provides specific examples of ‘non-innocent passage’ — the threat or actual use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of the coastal state, or in any other manner in violation of the UN Charter; using or even practicing with weapons; intelligence gathering; acts of propaganda; or launching, landing, or taking on board any aircraft or military device. In such cases of ‘non-innocent’ activities, the coastal state can prevent passage. Suffice to say, the US, which respects the UNCLOS selectively, proposes to exercise its prerogative unilaterally, under its national legislation known as the Freedom of Navigation Programme of 1979. This is tantamount to challenging Iran’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which Tehran will not accept.

Therefore, from the Indian perspective, the US is precipitating an explosive situation in the Persian Gulf, a region of great significance to our national interests. Three issues arise here. One, India’s stance vis-a-vis the ‘coalition of the willing’ that the US is assembling in the Strait of Hormuz. The US had canvassed in Brussels at a recent meeting of NATO defence ministers for the alliance’s involvement in its face-off against Iran. Washington hopes to put the new coalition in operational mode within the fortnight. Two, what if military conflagration ensues, with Iran challenging the US blockade and the latter using overwhelming force to impose its coercive will? Three, a potential regional conflict can gravely endanger the safety of over 7 million Indians in the Persian Gulf countries.

Clearly, India should unequivocally condemn any US military adventure directed against Iran without a UN mandate. Iran is a friendly country with which India has civilisational ties. In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Vajpayee government took a principled stance and initiated a resolution in Parliament voicing India’s anguish. An analogous situation has arisen. At any rate, the Modi government should break its deafening silence over the crisis building up in India’s neighbourhood. India cannot but be concerned that West Asia, which is already mired in crisis, will lurch toward chaos and apocalyptic destruction if a war breaks out. Inevitably, the debris will fall on the surrounding regions of South and Central Asia. Furthermore, this is a contrived crisis that has nothing to do with nuclear non-proliferation. It arose solely due to Trump’s vanity to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal.

Second, a truly piquant question is arising if the US seeks access to Indian military bases under the provisions of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) of 2016. Conceivably, under LEMOA, Indian basing will permit the US forces deployed at the strait to pull longer, more sustained naval and air operations in the extended region to realise US policy goals against Iran. There can be no two opinions that such an ally status for India alongside the US, arrayed against Iran, will be morally repugnant and politically injudicious and damaging.

In the long term, it will stand out as a Himalayan blunder, signifying deleterious erosion of India’s strategic autonomy, and tarnish its image and standing regionally and internationally, weakening its influence in the multipolar order. Under what compulsions Indian elites buckled under US pressure to sign LEMOA remains unclear. Even in the halcyon days of Indo-Soviet friendship, Moscow made no such demands on India’s sovereignty and strategic autonomy.