Despite call for sanctions, India keeps trading with Iran

Iran is revelling in a propaganda coup by hosting a major trade delegation from India, which, along with China and Turkey, has rebuffed pressure from Washington to isolate the Islamic republic because of its nuclear ambitions.
US-led sanctions against Iran have provided India with a welcome opportunity to improve its lop-sided trade balance with Tehran.
Energy hungry India buys $14 billion (Dh51.4 bn) worth of oil from Iran a year but sells Tehran just $2.7 bn of goods.
To bypass US banking sanctions, India agreed last month to pay for 45 per cent of its Iranian oil imports in rupees rather than the US dollar.
That money would stay in Iran and be used to fund Iranian purchases of Indian goods.
It is a lucrative deal that India said would provide "huge opportunities" for it to export goods to Iran such as tea, rice, wheat, textiles, pharmaceuticals and factory machinery.
All of these are needed by Iran and none are outlawed by UN sanctions.
Indian and Iranian experts estimate bilateral trade could reach $30 bn by 2015.
The 70-member Indian trade delegation, which wraps up its five-day visit tomorrow, has declined to name the companies taking part, apparently because of concerns about potential US reprisals.
Pro-Israeli groups in the US and politicians in Washington have criticised India for undermining international efforts to isolate Iran, Opec's second largest producer.
New Delhi has no desire to upset its good relations with the United States or Israel, which is a key arms supplier to India.
But neither does it like being hectored or lectured by either country when India has its own geo-political and commercial interests to consider.
India, which relies on Iran for about 12 per cent of its oil imports, sees its good ties with Tehran as an important regional counter-balance to its arch-rival, Pakistan.
"Has not US military aid to Pakistan been more gravely damaging to India's immediate security interests than India's oil trade with Iran is to the US?," Ramesh Thakur, a nuclear non-proliferation expert at the Australian National University, wrote in The Australian newspaper yesterday.
India also views Iran as a vital pathway to Afghanistan as regional countries jockey for position there ahead of the withdrawal of US and other foreign combat forces from that country at the end of 2014.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said last month that Washington was engaging in "very intense and very blunt" conversations with India, China and Turkey to stop oil imports from Iran.
All three countries are resisting that pressure, saying they will abide by UN sanctions against Iran but will not implement others imposed unilaterally by the US or European Union.
Angered by claims that New Delhi was undermining an international drive to curb Iran's nuclear programme, India's embassy in Washington issued a robust statement last week.
India has repeatedly said Iran must address concerns by the UN's nuclear watchdog about its nuclear programme, the diplomatic mission said.
But India's critics should not overlook "the imperative of India's dependence on oil imports from Iran the energy needs of its people".
Iran is India's second biggest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia.
Iran is reported to have offered to supply oil to India with its own tankers if India is unable to charter vessels because of insurance problems.
Ishrat Aziz, an Indian former diplomat told Al Jazeera yesterday: "We are not going to take sides… This (American) idea that you are with us or against us is really not acceptable and is something we must resist and, in fact, reject."

mtheodoulou@thenational.ae