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    A Spy Satellite and a Strategic Partnership
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 29 January 2008

    On January 21, a cloudy Monday, India's polar satellite launch vehicle PSLV C10 put Israeli satellite Tecsar into orbit. The launch was not conducted with the customary fanfare. The media, usually a special invitee and a ringside spectator at such events of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), was pointedly kept away. Reason: Israel wanted no media witnesses at the launch of its spy satellite.

    Israeli daily Haaretz minced no words about the satellite's mission. It said that the "sophisticated new spy satellite ... could boost intelligence-gathering capabilities regarding Iran." In a separate analysis, the same daily said that the satellite "enables Israel to establish a new point of view in space, allowing it photographic angles and reception of Iranian communications, which were unavailable in prior satellite launches." A news agency quoted another analyst as saying that that the satellite was "meant to give Israel the capability to keep an eye on the Iranian nuclear program."

    The launch was not the first illustration of a strikingly significant change in India's policy towards Iran, long considered the South Asian country's "civilizational ally." India had voted with the US and against Iran in meetings of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) twice, in 2005 and 2006. The votes were widely seen as signs of a new US-India "strategic alliance." The launch revealed the third dimension that New Delhi - obviously along with Washington with its well-advertised stakes in spying on Iran - was trying to give the alliance.

    This was not an abrupt development. The foundation for the significantly expanded "strategic alliance" was laid during the term of the far right Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in New Delhi. Then-National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra spelt out the idea and the objective five years ago. During a visit to Washington in 2003, Mishra declared that "a core consisting of democratic societies must emerge, which can take on international terrorism in a holistic and frontal manner...."

    Identifying India, the US and Israel as three such societies, facing "similar threats of terrorism," he called for their "strategic partnership." The Vajpayee regime's enthusiasm for the partnership was not confined to words. It had already sought and acquired "anti-terror" Israeli expertise for operations in Kashmir, which has always figured crucially in India-Pakistan conflicts.

    New Delhi then also lobbied for Tel Aviv's sale of the Phalcon airborne early warning radar system - jointly developed by the US and Israel. The negotiations reached an advanced stage rapidly after Mishra's appeal for a new axis. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which headed Vajpayee's coalition government, had always considered Israel a "natural ally" against "Islamic terror," identified mainly with Pakistan. With the party in power, India's new defense ties with Israel with a definite "anti-Islamist" dimension were in for a dramatic escalation.

    India's dependence on Arab oil might have dictated some discretion, but military relations with Israel were not to be reversed. The Kargil conflict of 1999 between India and Pakistan saw New Delhi seeking active Israeli support. As one approving report of the time put it , "Israel dug deep into its military equipment reserves to supply ordnance and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in order to give the ill-prepared and ill-equipped Indian Army the edge over Pakistan in the 11-week-long war."

    The coming to power of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after the BJP's electoral defeat in 2004, made only a cosmetic difference to the policy. The India-Israeli military relationship went "underground," as another analyst put it, but was pursued vigorously nevertheless.

    In 2006, top Indian defense officials made covert visits to Israel. Indian Air Force Chief Marshal S. P. Tyagi and the Navy Vice Chief, Vice Admiral Venkat Bharathan, were among those who made such secret trips. Bilateral military ties with Israel, by now the second-largest defense supplier to India (after Russia) with sales worth around $900 million a year, were to burgeon further.

    Advanced radars, long-endurance and high-altitude UAVs, electronic warfare systems and third-generation night-fighting capabilities were to figure in the talks. The priority area, however, remained that of missiles and anti-missile defense systems, with which the spy-satellite-launching ISRO had always as much to do as with civilian space programs.

    The array of missiles, on which India-Israel collaboration was achieved over the years, ranged from the air-to-surface Crystal Maze and the air-to-air Python to the Navy's Barak anti-missile defense project (embroiled in a corruption scandal). During his Israeli visit, Tyagi also reviewed the progress of the $1.1 billion Phalcon project.

    The days of discreet visits were soon over, however. In July 2007, the Indian media gave concerted publicity and coverage to an India-Israel plan to jointly develop a missile system worth $2.47 billion. The missile system, expected to take four to five years to develop, is reportedly capable of detecting and destroying aircraft, missiles and drones at a range of 70 kilometers. The entire program is claimed to be an extension of a $480 million Israel Aerospace Industries project, launched in January 2006 to develop a supersonic 60-kilometer missile defense system for the Indian Navy.

    The strategic aspect of the bilateral relations has not been lost sight of. In October 2006, Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Danieli ruffled many feathers in India by praising the BJP's call for a proactive Indian role in dismantling terrorist camps in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Less than a year later, a high-level Israeli military delegation was reported to have been taken to the India-administered State of Jammu and Kashmir to formulate "anti-infiltration strategies." The Indian Army also uses a wide range of Israeli surveillance devices along the border with Pakistan.

    The launch of the anti-Iran spy satellite makes the ever-expanding India-Israel military relations a threat to peace over a larger region than the subcontinent of South Asia's nuclear-armed rivals.