It was in a conference room in distant Vienna where one of the most significant post-Cold War shifts in New Delhi's foreign policy was implemented. On 24 September, New Delhi decided to cast its lot with its 'strategic partner' the United States, and jointed a resolution against 'good friend' Iran at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The resolution accused Iran of pursuing a 'policy of concealment' with regard to its nuclear programme, saying that Teheran was 'non-compliant' with the IAEA statute. Declaring that Iran's nuclear aims fall 'within the competence of the Security Council', the resolution also demanded that Iran halt all enrichment and processing of uranium.
India's vote provoked outrage back in Delhi. Left-wing allies of the Congress party, the right-wing opposition, scholars and journalists alleged that India had gone back on the very principles of non-alignment that it had championed before the world, accusing the government of reducing the country to an American client state. Old friend Teheran expressed 'hurt', 'surprise' and 'shock' at this betrayal. But that was acceptable for a newly acquiescent New Delhi – it had gotten a pat on the back from the Bush administration. Sections of India's strategic elite were exultant at this 'realist' turn to foreign policy.
New Delhi's decision to jettison a decades-old posture was embedded within a complex web of regional and international issues: the evolution of Indo-US and Indo-Iranian relationships; the implications for Southasian energy security; and the Washington DC strategy to isolate Iran. India's Vienna decision reflects the broader trend towards subservience to US interests, and is both morally untenable and strategically myopic.
The betrayal