For, within 24 hours, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced that her country had already evolved a consensus with the other four veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council to impose much harsher sanctions against Iran, and consequently Iran's deal with neighbour Turkey and distant Brazil meant nothing. The American media took the cue and dubbed it 'a failed gambit'. It also argued that the current deal was no different from the one Iran had concluded with big powers last year, only to go back on it. However, it seems that America had started counting its chickens before they were hatched. The latest reports from Moscow paint a picture quite different from the earlier ones, which had indicated that while Russia welcomed Iran's swap deal, it still had some 'concerns'. There was a similar ambiguity in the remarks of the spokesman of the Chinese foreign office.

Now Russia has made it clear that the trilateral deal in Tehran was, in fact, 'orchestrated' by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev during his talks with the Brazilian president Luis Lula de Silva in Brasilia on the sidelines of the BRIC summit in April. Later, the Russian President had travelled to Turkey from Syria — a firm ally of Iran — and brought the Turkish prime minister on board. Moscow's clear message to Washington, therefore, is that to get Tehran to 'honour the swap deal is more important than adopting new sanctions', and if the US did not support the swap deal, 'it could be held responsible for its possible failure'. Russia has also conveyed its opposition to any unilateral sanctions by the US. Under these circumstances the adoption of US-sponsored resolution by the Security Council becomes problematical because energy-starved China has even greater stakes in Iran. Moreover, both Turkey and Brazil are members of the council. India is not, though it expects to be a non-permanent member from January next. This brings me to India-Iran relations irrespective of what happens at Turtle Bay in relation to the Iranian nuclear quest.

These relations are age-old and have always been close. They are rooted in their respective civilizations and in history. Above all, they are geo-strategic, given the convergence of their interests in the region, including especially in Afghanistan. It is not generally realized that Iran is this country's only link with Central Asia and even Afghanistan because Pakistan just would not give us trade and transit rights, notwithstanding the edicts of SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Economically, Iran is India's second largest source of crude oil. The largest contingent of foreign students in this country is Iranian. Many, if not most, of these students opt for technological studies. On the other hand, myriad complexities of the relationship do create problems. For instance, over the years at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), Tehran has taken an anti-India stand on the sensitive Kashmir issue. While being at one with India in denouncing terrorism, Iran remains totally circumspect about Pakistan being the epicentre of this menace.

For its part, Iran has felt hurt because from September 2006 to November 2009, India voted three times at the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for American-sponsored resolutions 'directed against Iran'. The voting at Vienna in November last had taken place shortly after the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki's visit to New Delhi. Iran sent India a strongly worded letter ascribing the pattern of Indian voting to 'undue American influence'. Iran is also peeved at India's reluctance to join the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project because of concerns about the pipeline's safety in Pakistan and the price of gas. Iran itself had no compunction in reneging on an agreement with India to sell liquefied natural gas (LNG).

This might explain why Mottaki took his time before receiving his Indian opposite number though the latter had arrived in Tehran a day before the G-15 summit. However, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saw the Indian foreign minister almost immediately. Both sides have described their conversation as 'cordial and constructive'. What this will do to the relationship remains to be seen. But Tehran has every reason to be pleased with the first statement Krishna made on his return home. In a newspaper interview, he disagreed with the American approach that enhanced sanctions were inevitable, and pleaded that efforts should be made to 'encourage Iran to deal directly with the IAEA so that it can come into the mainstream'. It is also a good sign that, according to a decision taken during the talks in Tehran, the Indo-Iranian Joint Commission that looks after the entire gamut of the relationship will hold its meeting in early July. The last time it had met was in November 2008.

No account of India's diplomatic preoccupation in recent days can be complete without a mention of a minor storm in its uneasy relationship with its giant northerly neighbour, China. After sharp and prolonged exchanges — far more assertive and aggressive on China's part than on India's — things had simmered down between the two countries when an avoidable controversy raised its ugly head in early May. Ironically, no Chinese started the squabble. Its initiator was an Indian, and that, too, the minister for environment Jairam Ramesh, an able and articulate but vain and garrulous man. He was in Beijing. He did not say anything against the Chinese. Instead, he lambasted the Indian Home Ministry for being 'paranoid', 'alarmist' and for 'seeing demons where none exists'. Why? Because the home ministry, basing its actions on intelligence reports, was being cautious about the expanding activities of the Chinese company Huawei Technologies, reputed to have the largest mobile phone network in the world next only to Ericsson. Neither the US nor other western countries have disallowed this Chinese company from functioning but all watch it carefully because of Chinese capacity to hack the most sensitive computers of host nations.

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