Bharat Karnad rejects American criticisms of India’s policy towards Iran:

In actuality, it’s Washington’s unbending attitude towards accommodating India’s vital interests in Iran that potentially threatens the Indo-U.S. bilateral relationship. Burns and others U.S. critics of India’s Iran policy are, in effect, forcing Indo-U.S. relations back into a version of the old, inappropriate, and eminently discardable, “If you are not with us, you are against us” policy mold. By framing the issue in dichotomous terms, critics in Washington ignore the economic and domestic context in which India’s Iran policy is made.

That’s true for the most part. Even when critics of India’s policy acknowledge this context, it is by way of dismissing it as nothing more than proof of Indian “unreliability.” The assumption behind this dismissal is that India’s desire to give its national interests priority is proof that it is unworthy of a closer relationship. As Karnad says, this wrongly equates “India’s leadership ambitions with toeing the American line.” In this way, Iran hawks in the U.S. can take actions that sour U.S. relations with India, and then blame the Indian government for its “unreliability” when New Delhi doesn’t yield to whatever it is the Iran hawks want. The message is that the relationship with India will be one in which India yields on every issue of importance and its interests will be shortchanged, or else India will be accused of having “let down” the U.S. by failing to be sufficiently subservient. This has been a failed approach to managing relations with Turkey, Germany, and Japan in recent years, and it will backfire on the U.S. if it is applied to the relationship with India.

Karnad explains the folly of this very well:

Israel and Iran will thrash out their problems in their own way and it makes no sense to hold the Indo-U.S. partnership hostage to that situation, even less, to Iran’s proliferation status. By creating friction over Indo-Iranian ties, America is in danger of achieving the smaller, regional, objective at the expense of the larger, overarching, strategic goal.