The highlights this week: India weighs the future of a port project in Iran amid new U.S. tariffs, exiled members of Bangladesh’s ousted government voice frustrations ahead of elections in the country, and the Maldives leads the region in passport power .
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: India weighs the future of a port project in Iran amid new U.S. tariffs, exiled members of Bangladesh’s ousted government voice frustrations ahead of elections in the country, and the Maldives leads the region in passport power.
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India’s Chabahar Conundrum
U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 25 percent tariff on countries doing business with Iran has put India in a tough spot, jeopardizing the future of an investment project teeming with geopolitical and strategic significance.
Nearly a decade ago, in May 2016, India struck a major transport corridor deal with Iran and Afghanistan. New Delhi agreed to provide $500 million in investments to develop a port in the southern Iranian city of Chabahar. The agreement also included plans for new roads and a railroad from Chabahar to the Afghan border.
The plans fell short in part because New Delhi held back on investments due to U.S. sanctions on Tehran—even as it received several U.S. sanctions waivers that allowed it to keep working on the project. (U.S. sanctions on Tehran scaled back up after Trump took office in 2017 and withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal a year later.) Trump’s new levy poses the latest challenge to the project.
Soon after Trump’s tariff announcement, India’s Economic Times claimed
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