China-India 'Cooperative Competition' In Iran
Beijing needs Tehran for its Belt and Road Initiative, whereas New Delhi needs Tehran for its International North-South Transportation Corridor.
August 9, 2018 | By Zoe Leung and Michael Depp
Making inroads into Iran has become a priority for both China and India, with both nations seeking to expand influence in their respective regions. Located at a critical juncture, Iran links Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Furthermore, Iran’s abundant resources provide a significant amount of energy to China and India. These factors have always influenced Tehran’s relationships with Beijing and New Delhi, which have always fallen somewhere in between transactional and strategic. While the Sino-Indian relationship has been fraught with various challenges, the manner in which the two nations manage their differences in Iran—employing a mix of cooperation and competition—sheds light on their relative power and underlies the changing nature of their relations. Unlike traditional, binary inter-state strategic competition, the China-India rivalry in a sanctioned Iran likely will evolve into a long-term coexistence indicative of what may lie ahead for their strategic relationship in other, non-neighboring countries.
India’s economic footprint in Iran centers around Delhi’s geopolitical ambitions to improve regional connectivity, strengthen energy security and gain access to European markets. The key piece of Delhi’s strategy is the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), a joint venture spearheaded by India, Russia and Iran to boost infrastructure connectivity from Russia through Iran to the Indian Ocean. When completed, it will allow easy access to energy resources in landlocked Central Asia—much faster than the current route via the Suez Canal—and create trade corridors linking India to European countries via Russia that completely and strategically bypass Pakistan.
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