‘India could have played more active role in West Asia’
TEHERAN : India could have played a more active role in West Asia, said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, just months after China helped broker a key normalisation pact between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Speaking to a delegation of Indian journalists in Tehran, Kani said Indian diplomacy had shown “passivity" in the region in contrast to China. “I believe,among the great powers of the world, it is the Chinese party that has emerged victorious because it did not allow the United States’ illegal restrictions to affect its bilateral relations with different countries.
I believe the Chinese picked the fruit of their policies because they mediated the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Beijing," Kani said. China has continued purchases of Iranian oil despite US sanctions on Iran. India, which was a key buyer of Iranian oil in the past, ended purchases in 2019 in an effort to avoid US sanctions.
This has stunted the growth of the bilateral economic relationship and Iranian officials have publicly called on India to resume oil sales. “My question is why India is not an importer of Iranian oil at this moment? Because India has been Iran’s partner in different fields and India has been an old customer of Iranian oil. If our Indian friends are serious, we can develop and deploy a number of appropriate mechanisms so the US could not injure the symbiotic relationship between us," Kani stated.
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