History revisited: How India responded to Iran’s pitch for a confederation with Pakistan in 1958

The Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s comment last fortnight about the situation of India’s Muslim community did not sit well with New Delhi. The Ministry of External Affairs denounced as “unacceptable” and “misinformed” his statement that Muslims in India were “suffering” just like their counterparts in Myanmar and Gaza”.

Though India signed a deal with Iran in May to develop and operate its Chabahar port, some have characterised the engagement between the nations as “sub-par”. This is not the first time Teheran has presented New Delhi with a quandary. One almost-forgotten dilemma for India, which stretched over several years, involved the potential challenges that would have been posed by a proposed confederation between Iran and Pakistan.

The plan was the brainchild of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had become increasingly concerned about the stability of his rule following the overthrow of the monarchy in neighbouring Iraq in 1958. He began to contemplate strategies to shore up his legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects.

In the 1950s, some nations in West Asia experimented with joining together as confederations. In 1958, Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic. The same year, the Hashemite kings of Iraq and Jordan united as the Arab Federation.

This idea appealed to the Shah. Neighbouring Pakistan appeared to be the best candidate for such a union, given the strong ties between the two countries, as Alex Vatanka explains in his book Iran and Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy and American Influence.

During a visit to Pakistan in 1958, the Shah pitched the idea of a confederation with a single army and himself as the head of the entity. Though the idea was met with scepticism by Pakistani President Ayub Khan, many within the Pakistani power elite supported it, Vatanka writes. Among them was Iskander Ali Mirza, the Shia-Bengali who was Pakistan’s first president.

This confederation would have undoubtedly presented India with some complications. When the Indian ambassador to Tehran, BFHB Tyabji, reported to New Delhi that the Shah of Iran was keen on a “real union with Pakistan”, alarm bells were set off in Indian diplomatic circles.

However, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was notably composed. The correspondence between diplomat MJ Desai to Indian Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt showcased Nehru’s point of view. It noted that Nehru did not believe that such a confederation was a viable proposition. And if, in any case, Iran and Pakistan decided to join into a confederation, there was nothing India could do, Nehru said.

As Nehru had foreseen, that proposition was a tough one to implement. Pakistan was already a member of the Central Treaty Organisation along with Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the United Kingdom. The other members feared that a confederation of Pakistan and Iran would erode the relevance of the Central Treaty Organisation, Vatanka writes.

Moreover, as Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan CC Desai wrote to Foreign Secretary Dutt, such a confederation would trigger the disintegration of Pakistan. Already, the Bengalis of East Pakistan were chafing under the idea of being ruled from Karachi. Being governed by Tehran would inevitably lead them to “ask for separation, leaving only West Pakistan to consider the union with Iran”, Desai predicted. A country extending from Sylhet in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west was not remotely conceivable.

CC Desai also highlighted the sentiment of the Pakhtoon community in Western Pakistan. The Pakhtoons were split between Afghanistan and Pakistan and would no doubt prefer a union of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Desai believed that the idea was a vanity of the Shah of Iran, who like his predecessors only “seems to be dreaming of extending the frontiers of his empire”.

In the end, the idea of a confederation of Pakistan and Iran never found solid ground to move ahead. However, as Vatanka notes, another confederation was frequently proposed until the mid-1970s: a tripartite union between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Since the formation of Pakistan, its relations with neighbouring Afghanistan had often been strained. The Shah’s Iran, at times, had acted as a mediator in these situations but a confederation between the three as a solution to their mutual problems was short-sighted.

However, it was necessary for the security of Iran to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the threat of communism far from its boundaries. Though the Shah’s ally, the US, recognised the impracticality of a tripartite confederation, it also saw some potential in uniting the South-West Asian states to counter the Soviet threat in the region, Vatanka writes.

Despite this, Washington was aware that direct US mediation in the project would have compromised the stability in South Asia, Vatanka observes. For starters, a confederation of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran would pose a nightmare for India. Explicit US support would have further pushed New Delhi away from Washington. It was left for the countries to decide.

Ayub Khan spoke of a confederation of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan or the first time in Quetta on August 6, 1962. He put forward the proposal as something to ponder in the long run, as Pakistan’s border dispute with Afghanistan was yet to be settled, Vatanka recounts. Khan asserted that the formation of a union between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan was crucial; otherwise, India, with assistance from the Soviet Union, would subjugate them.

In India, this proposal was discussed in parliament in August 1962 by CK Bhattacharya of the Indian National Congress. Prime Minister Nehru reiterated that the proposal lacked substance. He said that India had always hoped to live in friendship with Pakistan. Occasional strife between the neighbours never altered that.

DC Sharma of the Congress went a step further to state that Pakistan’s proposal of a union with Afghanistan and Iran demonstrated the success of India’s Pakistan policy. It was an acknowledgment that “...Pakistan knows the strength of India”, he contended, and so was seeking “the help of Iran and Afghanistan to be a match for India”.

In the mid-1970s, Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto commissioned policy papers on the potential of a confederation with Iran, Vatanka writes. However, the drawbacks far outweighed the gains.

Moreover, the Americans were apathetic towards any such arrangement. On September 24, 1962, Ayub, at a meeting with US President John Kennedy, tried to sell the idea of a confederation of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan as “the only hopeful way of dealing with the security problem” in the region, but Washington was less than convinced. In the end, the idea was shelved for good and disintegrated with the Shah’s Iran.

Anondeeta Chakraborty is working on an archival research project focused on India’s strategic culture during the Cold War.