Delhi dissimulates Iran policy

Senior Indian officials publicly maintain that India would comply only with the sanctions against Iran imposed by the United Nations, thereby implying they saw no reason to restrict the country’s oil imports from Iran, no matter what the US’ Iran sanctions stipulated.

New Delhi pretends it is expanding India’s economic and trade relationship with Iran, notwithstanding Washington’s containment policy toward Iran.

Then five days ago the Barack Obama administration dropped a bombshell. In the course of a Congressional hearing in Washington, Clinton disclosed that in response to some “very intense and very blunt” talking by Washington, New Delhi is actually taking steps to curb the oil imports from Iran.

The Indian officials who waxed eloquently on the subject are nowhere to be seen. They scurried away like cockroaches facing a torch light. Their disappearing act was for good reason. Reuters has now broken the story that Clinton, after all, was speaking the truth and nothing but the truth.

Indeed, the Indian government has directed the state-owned refineries, which have been the major buyers of Iranian oil to drastically cut down their imports and look for alternate sources of oil supply. Funnily, one Indian refinery still shows the grit to import oil from Iran at the previous level, but it is a private company!

So, it seems the Indian officials vacuously bragged in front of the gullible local media, but when Washington read the riot act, they panicked and began acting just the way the Americans want.

And, to know the truth about an Indian government policy, you’d better depend on the US secretary of state or a western news agency report. 

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.