India Narrative

  Two recent developments have brought the strategic importance of Iran into India’s foreign policy calculus. As per reports, Iran and India are close to finalizing the long-term arrangements for operating the Chabahar port. Secondly, Iran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) whose Summit was held at Samarkand in Uzbekistan last week. The likely conclusion of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers will only underscore the growing significance of Iran to the geopolitics of Eurasia, Persian Gulf region and of India. Iran’s pivotal geographical location and the probable connectivity links that it can offer is one of the most important assets. Iranian ports like Bandar Abbas and Chabahar are key transit points for the trade corridors connecting India and the Indian Ocean with the Inner Asia. The International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC) which has been in the strategic discourse for almost two decades, without much progress, has suddenly come ali

Russian President Vladimir Putin has again batted for the "speedy launch" of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) to improve the transport and logistics architecture of the Eurasian region. At this week's Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Putin spoke in detail about the 7,200 km-long, multimodal trade corridor which will start from Mumbai, with nodes in West Asia, Central Asia, Caucasia and Russia covering large swathes of territory in landlocked Eurasia. "The speedy launch of this corridor is intended to be facilitated by the agreement between the Caspian states on cooperation in the field of transport, which came into force last year, which is aimed at turning the Caspian Sea region into a major international logistics hub," Putin told the gathering which comprised of Presidents of Azerbaijan (Ilham Aliyev), Iran (Ebrahim Raisi), Kazakhstan (Kassym-Jomart Tokayev) and Turkmenistan (Serdar Berdimuhamedov). The Russian President highlighted active