India’s dispatch of naval and air assets to the Gulf in response to the latest US-provoked crisis there is anti-Iranian to the core and intended to serve as an exercise for improving the South Asian state’s interoperability with its new American military-strategic ally.
The Gulf has been thrown into crisis as a result of two possible false flag tanker attacks and Iran’s downing of an American spy drone shortly after the latest one, but an unlikely country has decided to urgently dispatch its naval and air assets to the region in response…India. The South Asian state claims that it’s doing so in order to “reassure” Indian-flagged vessels transiting to and from the region, but the real reason is most likely that it intends for this deployment to serve as an exercise for improving the country’s interoperability with its new American military-strategic ally. The two Great Powers are closely cooperating in “containing” China, and the US successfully pressured India to discontinue purchasing Iranian oil under the pain of sanctions despite New Delhi previously promising last year to only abide by UNSC sanctions in this respect. India has now replaced its previous Iranian imports with Saudi, Emirati, and American resources instead, thus meaning that the other purpose of this so-called “reassurance” mission is to send the signal that it supports the US-led multilateral militarization of this waterway because it tacitly agrees with Washington’s official narrative that Iran was responsible for the earlier tanker attacks.
It’s not known whether India’s naval assets will be equipped with the ship-based surface-to-air missiles that it jointly produced with “Israel” and recently tested last month, but the two parties are now officially UN allies after New Delhi unprecedentedly voted together with Tel Aviv to prevent a Palestinian NGO from being granted consultative status by the global body so it wouldn’t be surprising if it does so in order to further ingratiate itself with the self-proclaimed “Jewish State” and their shared American ally. In any case, India’s military deployment to the Gulf has a more practical component to it than just virtue signaling fealty to its new American, “Israeli”, and Saudi friends because of the ways in which it can finally put the LEMOA and COMCASA pacts to use in a real-life operational environment. These agreements enable the US and India to use some of each other’s bases (such as the new ones that they established in the nearby Omani port of Duqm) on a case-by-case “logistical” basis and exchange sensitive military information, respectively, ergo the original assertion that this is intended to be an exercise to improve their interoperability.
Suffice to say, India’s moves are anti-Iranian to the core and might finally convince the Islamic Republic’s leadership to stop begging the South Asian state to reconsider its compliance with America’s unilateral sanctions regime after New Delhi so proudly showed off its implicit military support for Tehran’s American, “Israeli”, and Saudi enemies during the ongoing crisis. As is becoming the trend, the Indian rogue state‘s regionally destabilizing actions are increasing the geostrategic importance of the global pivot state of Pakistan, which has wisely remained neutral and is therefore best-suited for credibly mediating a peaceful resolution to the latest tensions. As such, Islamabad has proven its independence in foreign affairs and debunked the false claim that’s regularly propagated about it supposedly being nothing more than a Saudi puppet, with the true marionette of not just Riyadh but also Washington and Tel Aviv being revealed to be none other than India, which still unconvincingly clings to the discredited slogan of “multi-alignment” to justify its unipolar pivot.
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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
