India’s Iran Policy: Between US Primacy and Regionalism | Ifi Working Paper

Working Paper | November 2013
India’s Iran Policy: Between US Primacy and Regionalism
India shifted to the side of US primacy in 2004, but since then its foreign policy has shifted once more to the middle. Sitting with a senior Indian diplomat, I mentioned that India seemed to be caught between two stools, US primacy and regionalism. “That’s an apt image,” he said, “except we have not fallen between the stools.” Things are more fraught now, and less clear. Talk of the peace pipeline and of linkages with Iran returned to the agenda after 2004. As US power enters a period of decline as a result of economic trials and two expensive and inconclusive wars, the moment of regionalism seems on the horizon.