The project with India for development of the port of Chabahar in southern Iran has run into trouble before even getting started as Iran has backtracked on its promises to India, The Economic Times of India reported Monday.
Progress halted when Iranian port authorities told a visiting Indian Shipping Ministry delegation that the port-building contract had been awarded to an Iranian company, Aria Badaner. India had expected to carry out major construction of the port.
When the Indian side protested and cited the Iran-India agreement signed in June, Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization responded that the contract with Aria Badaner had been signed in March, three months before the memorandum of understanding with India was signed.
The Islamic Republic’s logic holds that the contract predates any commitment to New Delhi, although Indian officials said they had an understanding about handling construction dating back years before Iran came under sanctions that froze the project.
The message from the meeting was that India could easily play a role in construction by simply passing its pledged investment amount of $85 million to the Iranian company.
The Economic Times said, “This turnaround has come as a rude shock to India.”
The plan had called for India to take over two berths on lease and build container as well as cargo terminals at Chabahar. India wishes to use the port as its main route for access to Central Asia and, especially, to Afghanistan, where the Indians are trying to counter Pakistani influence.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif was in India over the weekend and discussed the issue. The Economic Times said it was told that Zarif “seemed to have downplayed the matter as a local problem in his conversations.”
The project has immense strategic value for India. The port will be connected to Zahedan on the Iran-Afghan border through a railway line, which was to be built by the Indian construction company IRCON.
But here, too, the Iranian authorities now say Iranian State Railways will undertake the construction, The Economic Times reported. Tehran said India should give its 50 percent share of the funding directly to the Iranian authorities, the newspaper said.
India has already built a 218-kilometer (135-mile) road from Zaranj on the Afghan-Iran border to Delaram in Afghan-istan’s Nimruz province, where it connects to the Afghan Garland Road, a national beltway that links many of Afghanistan’s major cities.
New Delhi has also presented Tehran with a draft for an India-Afghanistan-Iran transit agreement, which is necessary to anchor this project and other connectivity initiatives. Kabul agreed to the draft with small changes, The Economic Times said, but Iran has written its own draft, which is substantially different from what India proposed.
The newspaper said India “continues to hope that these issues are nothing more than ‘starting out troubles’ for a country emerging from isolation and sanctions.”
