Relations between Iran and India: Opportunities and limitations

Iran and India have experienced very complicated relations in the past decade. Despite the fact that during the past decades India's foreign policy inclined towards third world countries, India has advocated the United State's pressures on Iran in several fields, while it has not been a devoted partner for the United States against Iran. Why has not India met Iran’s expectations? Which factors lead to the expansion of relations between the two countries and which factors limit their cooperation? The hypothesis of this article is as follows: Iran and India have had opportunities for cooperation in political and economic dimensions, especially related to energy diplomacy, however this cooperation has negatively affected the interests of the United States, Israel and other Persian Gulf states, so that they have had limiting impact on the relations between Iran and India. This article is an explanatory research aiming to explore the hypothesis from the perspective of balance of interest theory. From this perspective, India is an emerging power with limited revisionist purposes, while Iran is a revolutionary actor with unlimited revisionist aims. Accordingly, these two actors have divergent strategies in dealing with international order, so that they cannot forge strategic partnership.