Congress MP and Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs member Manish Tewari speaks to The Indian Express about the US and Israel’s strikes in Iran, the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s retaliation against US bases in Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE. The author of the recently released A World Adrift: A Parliamentarian’s Perspective on the Global Power Dynamic, Tewari also speaks about the implications for India, which has deep strategic and economic stakes and diaspora interests in the region.
* What are your first impressions about the situation unfolding in Iran and West Asia, and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei?
The situation in the Gulf Cooperation Council region and the broader Middle East is always a matter of concern for India, given that it is a part of our extended neighbourhood. We have had a huge diaspora in these countries for decades. Any action that destabilises the broader Middle East has implications for India’s energy security. Since we are a net importer of oil and natural gas, to the extent of 90% of our needs and going by the latest reports, it seems that maritime traffic through the Straits of Hormuz has almost become negligible. So, in the coming days, this is going to seriously impact India’s energy purchase profile too. Therefore, from our standpoint, an end to hostilities and a return to negotiations would always be the preferred option.
* The situation appears to be escalating, with Iranian missiles landing in the Gulf countries that have American bases …
The situation is a little more complicated, given that there is an entire history which goes back to the aftermath of World War I and the attempts by the victors of World War I to reorder the greater Middle East post the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. For over a century now, the Middle East has been in a state of flux.
The dynamic got further entangled after World War II with the establishment of Israel and the non-implementation of the two-state solution, i.e. a homeland for the Palestinians who had been deprived of their legitimate home that existed before 1948. Then, with the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the establishment of the current regime there, you have had a state of tension between the principal players in the Middle East, i.e. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and of course Israel. Added to that is the substantial US presence in the Middle East.
Effectively, from 1948, Israel has been running the US policy in the Middle East despite the oil monarchies that have become very affluent over the past seven decades and have cultivated the US assiduously. The Gulf monarchies and other heavy-hitters in the broader Middle East need to seriously reflect on why their collective heft is not able to moderate the US policy towards the region. Quixotically, in the current standoff, there seems to be a strange constellation of radically opposite forces which seem to have converged with regard to lobbying and convincing the Trump administration that it must strike Iran after assembling the largest armada post the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The flawed argument being that if the US did not strike iran it might have emerged stronger from the ongoing negotiations on the nuclear question and the impasse that it has created. This is what culminated in the current round of strikes on Iran.
* What do you make of Donald Trump’s claim that the strikes were aimed at ending the security threat and ensuring Iran couldn’t develop a nuclear weapon?
Unilateral and coercive regime change has never been a good idea and it has not worked. In 2003, there were mythical weapons of mass destruction which became the casus belli to invade Iraq. Ultimately, no such weapons were discovered. Then, you had the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime. Libya has been in continuous strife since then. You also had the Arab Spring in 2010-11 across states in the Middle East and North Africa. Regime change is always destabilising, and going by the recent historical experience, it has never worked. Another example being US intervention in Afghanistan … They handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2021 after spending close to $3 trillion after two decades of quasi-occupation. Similarly, the cost of the Iraq invasion was also close to $3 trillion … Ultimately, the US leadership needs to do a cost-benefit analysis. Has all this exertion and investment in blood and treasure been worth it in the ultimate analysis?
* What is your reading of the government’s stand?
Ultimately, the GCC and the greater Middle East are part of our extended neighbourhood. But we have never been players in that region in the geostrategic sense of the word. The players have been the countries of the region, it was imperial Britain, even after its withdrawal from the region post World War II, followed by the USA … To some extent, Russia in the Syrian conflict was a player. The real player has been the USA.
We have always tried to maintain a very benign posture since we have a lot of people working there. We have always had an interest in stability in that region. That has been a strategic continuum going back decades.
* Why is the Congress questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel?
Historically, including even the current dispensation, India has remained committed to a two-state solution. We have always believed that UN resolutions on Palestine of 1948 should be implemented. Under those circumstances, we have always tried to maintain a balance and an equilibrium. While it is a fact that diplomatic relations between India and Israel were restored under a Congress dispensation in 1992, we have always been consistent in our stand for the rights of the Palestinian people. In that context, the questions that have been raised (by Congress) are very legitimate. PM Modi should have unequivocally articulated India’s national position while addressing the Knesset without any equivocation or dissimulation.
India’s consistent stand has been that we have never supported regime change by force or coercion. We have always believed that if at all a change of government has to happen, it has to be between the government and the people of that country, whether through democratic means as it happened in a host of East European countries post the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 or elsewhere around the world, the litmus test being that these movements should be organic and not externally inspired.
* Would a Congress-led government have dealt with this situation differently?
That is a hypothetical question. But India has always been opposed to regime change through military intervention. And this has been the position through different governments. This was the stand even of the Vajpayee government in 2003, when there was a request to put boots on the ground in Iraq. An NDA government led by the BJP, continuing the Congress tradition, refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq in aid of unilateral military intervention under the fig leaf of an UNSC resolution.
