High-wire diplomacy over Gulf tensions
As India’s third largest trade partner, Abdullah’s visit also provided an opportunity to expand the IndiaUAE comprehensive strategic partnership by enhancing ties in a range of key areas, including trade, banking and investment, defence production, security, counterterrorism and energy, while exploring new areas of cooperation, including their trilateral cooperation initiatives, especially in Africa
Tensions between the US and Iran are impacting Indian diplomacy, with India looking to firm up its responses and shore up relationships as the situation in the Gulf becomes increasingly volatile. The visit of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE foreign minister, to New Delhi at a time when tensions in the Gulf are rising served to bolster the rapidly growing bilateral cooperation in key sectors such as energy security and strategic linkages. During his meetings with PM Narendra Modi and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Sheikh Abdullah provided assurances on continued energy supplies and on building India’s strategic reserves.
The UAE is India’s fourth-largest energy supplier and the first country to offer contributions to India's strategic oil reserve. With India, perforce, having to stop importing Iranian crude because of US sanctions, and needing to import around 80% of its oil requirements to power its economy, it is vital for India to ensure uninterrupted energy supplies, which the UAE and Saudi Arabia are offering.
As India’s third largest trade partner, Abdullah’s visit also provided an opportunity to expand the India-UAE comprehensive strategic partnership by enhancing ties in a range of key areas, including trade, banking and investment, defence production, security, counter-terrorism and energy, while exploring new areas of cooperation, including their trilateral cooperation initiatives, especially in Africa. India and UAE ties have rapidly improved over the past decade and the political synergies have provided opportunities for businesses to invest in each other. The UAE is home to 3.3 million Indians, largest in the Gulf region, and assurances about their safety and security were strongly reiterated by the visiting dignitary.
Modi had visited the UAE in August 2015, when the two countries elevated their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership and again in February last year. As chair of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, UAE broke new ground and invited India, for the first time, as Guest of Honour at its Council of Foreign Ministers meet in Abu Dhabi in March 2019.
Navdeep Suri, India’s Ambassador to the UAE, during whose tenure the bilateral relationship has flourished and reached new levels of cooperation, said the two days of talks had gone very well. South Block is looking for a senior official to replace Suri, who is due to retire in September.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has announced that the US will form a coalition to secure shipping in the Gulf Choke Points and, according to sources, has invited India to join the coalition. While the Indian Navy has deployed two warships, INS Chennai and INS Sunayana in the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf for maritime security operations, New Delhi has chosen to remain noncommittal on joining the US-led coalition there. Ways to reduce the impact of tensions in the Gulf region were high on Jaishankar's agenda at the Commonwealth meeting he attended in London.
With India appearing increasingly to be siding with US (and Saudi Arabia and UAE) initiatives in the Persian Gulf region, sending ships and mounting aerial surveillance by naval aircraft to safeguard its merchant vessels traversing the region, the Indian Ambassador to Iran, Gaddam Dharmendra, has been attempting to reassure Tehran that, despite cutting back on oil imports India remains committed to the Chabahar project, despite pressure from Washington. However, with aid for the strategically important Chabahar port, which not only links India and Iran but also is a crucial gateway for India to Afghanistan and beyond, to Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan, drastically reduced in this year’s budget, from INR150 crore in 2018-19 to INR 45 crore, New Delhi does not appear too convincing.
The decision to reduce the allocation for Chabahar port, despite a US waiver to India over it, will further hurt India-Afghan trade, already hit by Pakistan’s decision to ban airspace rights to most flights to and from India, and crippling US sanctions on Iran which, after the International Atomic Energy Agency emergency meeting, are likely to “substantially” increase.
Meanwhile, India awaits the July 17 International Court of Justice verdict on Kulbhushan Jadhav – the Indian officer held for espionage in Pakistan. India’s lead counsel Harish Salve will be absent, but diplomats Venu Rajamony and Deepak Mittal will be at the Hague, hoping the verdict will allow consular access to Jadhav.