New Delhi, Feb. 5: External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee is travelling to Iran tomorrow on what is likely to be a most delicate assignment. Even as he reaffirms Delhi’s traditional and warm relations with Tehran, Mukherjee will counsel Iran not to break loose from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Mukherjee (in picture), who will be in Iran for the start of a week-long 29th anniversary celebration of the Islamic revolution, will meet President Ahmadinejad as well as the rest of the top Iranian leadership.

His visit comes at a crucial hour in the life of the Persian Gulf. In the wake of the failing American intervention in Iraq, Iran is being accused of fomenting internal disturbances in that country. Simultaneously, it has been under relentless pressure from the US to freeze its nuclear programme.

With India having twice voted against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mukherjee’s visit to Tehran becomes that much more sensitive. Especially since Mukherjee, in the wake of the nuclear agreement with America, is likely to counsel the Iranian leadership to keep its NPT obligations and not pursue a secret nuclear programme that is in violation of NPT commitments.

Of course, at the same time, Mukherjee will vociferously defend Iran’s right to carry on a peaceful nuclear programme.

The other major issue in the bilateral relationship has been the question of buying liquefied natural gas and oil from Iran, as well as building the “peace pipeline” from Iran to India via Pakistan.

Delhi seems to have come around to the view that even as it pursues its nuclear energy programme with the US, a mid-term and more sensible course would be to buy Iranian oil and gas as a more immediate measure. The price of gas has been a major sticking point so far, but it seems its resolution is now on the anvil.