The Vote against Iran;
 
While Venezuela expectedly opposed , even Brazil, Mexico and others like Algeria, , Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Yemen, and even Pakistan refused to side with US led campaign against Iran like another carried out against Iraq earlier, mostly concocted .They showed some spine and joined Russia and China and abstained.
 
India wants vote for its SC membership from Africa and the third world including Muslim countries and has its own Muslim population of 130 million , whose Shiia numbers form the second largest community in the world after Iran’s Shiias , more than that of Iraq. It was the Shiia community of Lucknow, which has issued almost a fatwa against Americans being unwelcome in the wake of illegal invasion of Iraq.
 
Throughout the existence of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India rightly claimed that its terms for nuclear haves and have knots were like the apartheid policy of South Africa, both in support of its decision for not signing the  NPT and then embarking on its weaponisation program , as the haves did not keep either to the spirit or the language of the Treaty .India has  thus undermined its own key legal argument to justify its own nuclear program — that countries can only be held accountable for international agreements they sign.

The NPT gives Iran the right to pursue the nuclear fuel cycle as well as the right to build a heavy water reactor, subject to safeguards. The Additional Protocol, which Iran signed, specified the intrusive inspections. But the new resolution India voted for goes far beyond Iran's legal obligations ,thus India has agreed a dangerous precedent which could be set up against it ,” since this means the safeguards agreement and additional protocol India has committed to sign with the IAEA also one day need not be the final word on its legal obligations.”

Sidharat Vardarajan underlined this in Hindu,”The vote India cast in the IAEA Board of Governors (BoG) was in favor of a resolution finding Iran in "non-compliance" with its safeguards obligations under the NPT and expressing "the absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. The finding is under two Articles, XII and III, of the IAEA Statute, both of which mandate referral of the matter to the Security Council. Unlike the referral under Article XII.C, which is more of a procedural nature, the referral under III.B.4 invokes the Security Council's responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and holds out a thinly veiled threat of sanctions and other punitive measures.”
 
Indian claims that it is a compromise to delay further action till November and provides the time and space needed for dialogue and diplomacy to work is “a claim of extraordinary naivety and even double-speak. First, Saturday's resolution is more likely to close the door on dialogue than re-open it since it demands Iran to surrender even more of its rights under the NPT than ever before. Secondly, the U.S. itself did not necessarily want an immediate referral because there is little practical significance to dragging Iran before the UNSC where China and Russia would exercise their veto. What it really wanted was for the international community to recognize Iran's civilian nuclear energy programmed as a threat to international peace and security requiring potentially endless "special verification" inspections, which go far beyond that required under the normal safeguards agreement and Additional Protocol. Armed with this broad endorsement, Washington can now choose the time and place for the political — and even military — escalation that is surely in the offing.” Has not Bush said time and again, all options, including force, are on the table?

In essence” Iran must implement "transparency measures ... which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol." Calling Iran a "special verification case," the BoG said this requires an expansion in the "limited" legal authority of the IAEA to conduct inspections. Specifically, this must include "access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military owned workshops and research and development locations." Would it become “an Inspection Raj of the UNSCOM/UNMOVIC type, which, even after physically checking every possible location in Iraq several times over, never had the ability to say Baghdad possessed no weapons of mass destruction. The resolution's demand for access to individuals is also a bit rich, considering that the source of the technology Iran is suspected of possessing — A.Q. Khan — is sitting pretty in Pakistan,” ( And would continue , because if he is ever investigated it will only bring out Western world’s and China’s complicity in his proliferations)
 
This resolution also makes Iran’s voluntary, non-legally binding undertaking in to a legally binding commitment. Thirdly, the resolution says Iran must "reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water.” This is a new and illegal demand that did not figure in the last August 11, 2005, resolution.” It represents as in case of Iraq a further shifting of the goalpost.
 
The US approach , with countries like Ecuador, Peru, Ghana, and Singapore apart from poodle Tony Blair ‘s UK and some what reluctant France and Germany has been a colonial, neo imperial attitude .Yes , NPT is our law .The natives and the colonized or the blacks at home must accept it as we interpret it. In one stroke, India has lost the prestige and standing in the world. Indian policy makers do not realize how to utilize the power of democratically elected representatives of over one billion people .This moral and political power is being frittered away , as in the past too. If India says boo, then it is a voice of one billion people.
 
The more you give the more US will demand .If you bend they will ask you to crawl. US can see how India can be shouted and frightened into submission , it will see how much more it can bully and blackmail India. No wonder USA was delighted. U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns called India’s surrender to bullying as "a blow to Iran's attempt to turn this into a developed world versus developing world debate."
 
Indian Government’s tame defense of its decision ;
 
Foreign Secretary Shyam Sharan was reduced to stutter that the compromise on the vote was, "On balance, in terms of the major preoccupations that we had, we felt that the resolution took care of those preoccupations." ( What so ever that might mean )The Foreign Ministry’s  statement added, “In our explanation of the vote we had clearly expressed our opposition to Iran being declared as non-compliant with its safeguards agreements.  Nor do we agree that the current situation could constitute a threat to international peace and security.”
 
In Washington Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen put up a brave front "Just for a moment take geo-politics out of the equation.[ Really Ronnie!] Oil and gas are finite resources. Nuclear energy is not," explained Ronen Sen, "Cutting edge research in nuclear sciences and non-conventional energy like fuel cell and bio-fuels is not taking place in Iran or Saudi Arabia."
 
"Every major hydrocarbon resource is some distance from India and poses great challenges and difficulties in bringing it home," argued Sen, suggesting that the nuclear energy route was an urgent calling. India produces a measly 3400 MW of nuclear power, which is 3 per cent of its overall production, embarrassingly short of the 10,000 MW set by DAE, and cruelly bereft of the 20,000 to 44,000 MW its nuclear founding fathers Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai envisaged. Not very convincing ! Especially with a whimsical and unreliable US establishment. Heard of Tarapore!
 
India currently imports 70 per cent of its energy needs mainly in the form of hydrocarbons, and the figure is expected to go up to 85 per cent in the coming decade. With the doubling of oil prices over the past year and no sign of a come-down, India is feeling the oil price squeeze and a decision was made at the highest level to diversify energy sourcing, What is urgent is security of availability of hydrocarbons for energy and as raw material ?
 
India's leftist parties, with over 60 members of Parliament , almost half as many as the Congress deputies in the Parliament naturally howled at the Iran vote face. 'Can the Manmohan Singh government justify the demand in the resolution that Iran not proceed with enrichment of uranium or the demand to stop the construction of a heavy water research reactor? This goes against India's declared stand that Iran has the right to nuclear technology under international safeguards as an NPT signatory,' an angry Community Party of India-Marxist said in a statement.
 
Stung by the criticism from its ally, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with the Left leaders for 75 minutes on Wednesday morning to explain the rationale behind the vote. However, the Left leaders were not satisfied.
 
BJP leader Yeshwant Sinha and former foreign Minister accused India of becoming a client state of USA. Nevertheless, his predecessor Jaswant Singh, who had long discussions with American diplomat Strobe Talbott, after India's 1998 nuclear weaponisation and brought about normalization in the relations said 'It is unbecoming of the government to hide behind officials when the decision is fundamentally political.'
 
The ruling Congress party’s retort that Bharatiya Janata party led coalition did not consult or brief the nation before nuclear tests or embarking on India Pakistan peace process is absurd.  In fact the statement by the spokesman of the Congress party after the May 1998 nuclear tests that what was the hurry was certainly “dense”. 

During Bill Clinton era , BJP was selling the US line that what India needed was US investment , signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was only to satisfy some lobbies in the establishment .Fortunately the Republican party killed the CTBT .
 
India's vote is unlikely to go in vain, asserts an aging strategic expert K.Subrahmanyam. "India's vote will be billed to America."  He is confident the US Congress will approve Bush's demand for a change in US laws to facilitate the nuclear deal with India. However, there are many senior diplomats asking the Singh government what the guarantee is that the US will not come asking for more after tasting blood once. They are quite right.
 
Another expert , hanging by US coat tails for becoming a big power, said,  "Dismiss such arguments and ask instead, does India want to become a big power? Do you want to go up? Then, you can't vote for a country (Iran) which intends to make bombs in your neighborhood," says an official in the national security apparatus.
 
Another well-known Pakistan expert argues, "How can India afford to have two Islamic countries with nuclear bombs in its neighborhood?" In the British imparted theory that all Muslims are against Hindus , such dense experts cannot comprehend that since long Shiia Iran and Sunni Pakistan have been at loggerheads i.e. in Afghanistan . Iran can be India’s economic and strategic ally against Pakistan. Tell it to Hindutva types!