THE INDIAN EXPRESS

APLN member Shyam Saran writes on the death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and its implication on India-Iran relations, arguing that geopolitical churn in West Asia has made India-Iran deal on Chabahar port more important.

The death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter accident on May 20 has added another layer of uncertainty in a region already wracked by political tensions and war. What would this mean for India? It is unlikely that there will be any significant shift in Iran’s domestic or external policies since it is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who will continue to exercise overall authority in the country.

In recent years, India-Iran relations have been marked by a certain wariness and even distance. Iran has been disappointed by India’s unwillingness to risk its strategic and economic interests with the US and the West in general while pursuing closer relations with Iran. It has watched with concern the extraordinary expansion of India-Israel relations under the Narendra Modi government and the parallel intimacy pursued with the most influential Gulf kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The process was helped by the Abraham Accords of 2020, which led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and later Sudan. This was managed through a major and sustained US diplomatic effort. There was a credible expectation that Saudi Arabia would soon follow suit. It is in this context that India became part of the I2U2 grouping in 2021, bringing together India, Israel, the UAE and the US, a quadrilateral in the West to match the quadrilateral (Quad), in the East.

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