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India’s engagement with West Asia including Iran has always been a balancing act hovering between economic necessities and strategic pursuits. The paper briefly traces the evolution of Indo-Iran engagements and also analyses their respective macroeconomic parameters. It also outlines and discusses three major geopolitical and geo-economic influences including sanctions on Iran, payment mechanism, and Iran’s business environment. Moreover, the issues pertaining to access to oil, transit route through Afghanistan and other trade facilitation measures have also been discussed. The paper also uses the revealed comparative advantage index to identify some potential areas of cooperation. Also, it argues that India needs to be more cautious and pragmatic in its strategic endeavours.

Besides other factors, the tensions and the repositioning on the global arena (“the Great Chessboard” as the American analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski called it) have a significant contribution for the start and development of the global economic crisis. This paper proves how the battle for the strategic energetic resources, mainly oil and natural gas, have deepened the global disequilibrium in what regards credit, commodity pricing and North-South divide. The analysis takes into consideration a framework in which the most important actors on the international level are changing but the resources and distribution are quite the same.