Iran is the crisis of the hour in Washington, and for the first time in recent memory talk now routinely turns to military action. In an effort to forestall Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, the United States has launched a worldwide effort to limit Iran’s oil exports and increase the economic stress on the Iranian regime. Where sanctions on Iran were once seem as a somewhat quixotic American campaign, they are about to go worldwide; the United States will soon sanction firms that do business with Iran’s Central Bank, which now processes a large percentage of oil transactions. The European Union, meanwhile, is poised to embargo Iranian oil and Asian countries, including South Korea and Japan, are enlisting in the effort to economically isolate Iran.
As this effort proceeds, Americans will inevitably look to India, the fourth-largest importer of Iranian oil. But they will see a view of Iran that looks very different in New Delhi than it does in Washington. This difference over Iran poses a genuine problem to the two countries and, unless it’s bridged, it could throw a tremendous spanner into the machinery of U.S.-India relations.
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