NEW DELHI — Admittedly, the timing was awkward. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in New Delhi this week after declaring that India should reduce imports of Iranian oil and comply with Western sanctions. Yet across town, India and Iran were trying to figure out ways to do business together.

In the main ballroom of a five-star hotel, an Iranian trade delegation met with Indian exporters, exchanging cards, sipping tea and nibbling on cookies. The Iranians met one Indian trade group on Monday, another on Tuesday and had more meetings planned in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai — a business courtship seemingly in open defiance of Mrs. Clinton’s hard line.

“I am sure the future of India-Iran trade is very good,” said Yahya Al Eshagh, president of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines and the leader of the Iranian delegation.

No doubt, this week’s diplomatic choreography — with the Americans on one side of the capital and the Iranians on the other — could easily have been interpreted as a deliberate provocation at a moment when the once-shiny partnership between India and the United States seems to have dulled. But if the scheduling was poorly planned, the situation actually provided an illuminating window into the realpolitik of Iranian sanctions and of how the United States and India, as well as China, are all trying to achieve their divergent goals.