With Friends Like These....

India regresses:

Less than a week after the U.S. Senate hastily cleared the way for generous U.S. nuclear cooperation with India, New Delhi made three announcements that pretty much destroyed the White House’s arguments for proceeding.

First, within hours of the Senate vote, India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh met in New Delhi with Iran’s new foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and reaffirmed India’s interest in securing massive amounts of natural gas from Iran and upholding a previous Indian strategic cooperation agreement with Tehran.

Second — and with great fanfare — on November 20 Singh and Chinese president Hu Jintao signed a declaration committing their two countries to cooperate on civilian nuclear energy and to expand trade (to a level even higher than between the U.S. and India).

Finally, India’s new foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced November 26 that India had no problem with China giving nuclear assistance to Pakistan despite U.S. efforts to block any civil nuclear cooperation with the world’s worst proliferator.

In the U.S., none of these events received much press attention (they all happened after Congress recessed for Thanksgiving). Yet, taken together, they make a hash of the White House’s case for pushing unrestricted U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation. Certainly, offering such cooperation is no longer likely to get New Delhi to hedge against a more muscular China or to wean India away from energy and security ties with Iran. Nor does the administration’s claim that it will strengthen nonproliferation and allow the U.S. to deal with India with far less reference to Pakistan seem very credible.

Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that we're letting Iran get nukes?