There is something almost reassuring about the predictability of India’s Iran debate. The moment the US-Israel strikes started two weeks ago, the positions fell into prefabricated moulds with the speed of a well-rehearsed orchestra. The Left and the centre condemned New Delhi’s silence as moral abdication. Government sympathisers dismissed the criticism as naïve value-signalling. The broader strategic community too got divided along its usual fault lines. Thus far, however, the debate has generated more heat than light — that, I guess, is a sign that the most important questions are not being asked. Let us ponder over some here.
Many of us want New Delhi to take a clear and firm diplomatic stance on the war against Iran. This assumes that clarity is a virtue in foreign policy. But, is it? Clarity is good when you have the moral, material and diplomatic power to enforce the position you take. For a country that simply is not in a position to shape the outcome of the war — may I add an unjust war — being waged by the US and Israel against Iran, clarity without intent and intent without leverage is essentially posturing, not principle.
The deeper problem with the ongoing value-based critique of India’s Iran policy is that it is selectively applied. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, with far clearer violations of the UN Charter, with a UNGA resolution passed by 141 countries condemning the aggressor, the political and intellectual consensus in India was broadly sympathetic to New Delhi’s decision to abstain, continue buying Russian oil, and decline to name the aggressor. Why? Are Ukrainians the children of a lesser god?
How are the arguments we made then — that India has a legitimate defence relationship with Moscow, it cannot afford to alienate a longstanding partner, and so India needn’t take sides — logically distinguishable from the arguments being made today supporting India’s silence on Iran? Those invoking international law on Iran owe an explanation for why those same principles were not invoked vis-à-vis Ukraine. All this is to say that what is actually being argued is often not a principled foreign policy position but a deeply domestic political one. So call it what it is rather than dressing it up as values.
Let’s now come to the argument from the point of view of interests. Chabahar has featured prominently in the criticism — that India’s silence risked a vital strategic asset. This deserves equally critical scrutiny. The port has been a “geopolitical desirable” for three decades, progressing in fits and starts, hamstrung by US sanctions, Iran’s geopolitical calculations, and the inability of successive Indian governments to translate strategic intent into operational infrastructure. Iran has not signalled any intention to close Chabahar to India, and, I guess, they will not since the port serves Iranian interests as much as Indian ones.
Tehran’s approach to India’s core concerns has been helpful but not decisively straightforward. In the wake of India’s Kashmir decision, in 2019, the late Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei stated that “the Muslim people of Kashmir are being oppressed”. During the Pahalgam terror attacks, Iran’s foreign minister went ahead with his pre-scheduled visit to Islamabad. Iran condemned the Pahalgam terror attacks, but it did not name Pakistan as the sponsor of terrorism in Pahalgam and decided to position itself as a friend to both sides — neutrality!
Let’s dig up some history to analyse the current debate, which, to be honest, is less flattering than we might think. New Delhi’s record of speaking up against use of force by great powers has never been principled in the “no matter who or what” sense. It has been selective, primarily shaped by the nature of its strategic partnerships at the moment of crisis. New Delhi rightly condemned the UK-France-Israel attack on Egypt in 1956 and called it “dastardly”, but chose to be diplomatic weeks later when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, and voted with the Soviet bloc in opposing demands for Russian withdrawal from Hungary.
National interest, as determined by the government in power, has always shaped New Delhi’s positions. It abstained when the UN General Assembly voted to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, because the erstwhile USSR was a key partner. During the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the government merely said it “lacked justification” and was “avoidable” because India was deepening its strategic partnership with Washington (India’s Parliament deplored the military action, though). In 2011, India voted to impose sanctions on Libya but allowed Parliament to condemn the NATO attacks on the country. What this history tells us is not that India has been hypocritical (at times, it was) but that a sense of pragmatism has always tempered its normative voice, speaking loudly when it cost little and staying quiet when it cost much. The current Iran episode falls in that broad tradition. But I do think the Prime Minister’s visit to Israel was ill-timed. New Delhi could also have avoided its initial silence on Khamenei’s killing.
Washington will always look after its own interests — the temporary tariff waiver on Russian crude is a tactical concession, far from being a reflection of an honest strategic partnership, and it will be renegotiated the moment American interests demand it. Tehran’s relationship with India will similarly be governed not by norms or friendship but by what serves Iranian interests. Call me cynical, but it is how States behave, as has India in the past.
There is, finally, a bipartisan precedent that could have provided a way out. In April 2003, as the Vajpayee government carefully preserved the growing relations with Washington, Parliament unanimously passed a resolution deploring the US-led military action against Iraq. In 2011, the Manmohan Singh government supported UNSC Resolution 1970, which imposed sanctions on the Muammar Gaddafi regime, while simultaneously allowing the Lok Sabha to pass a resolution condemning NATO’s military action. In both cases, the government protected its strategic relationships while the nation expressed its mood through Parliament.
While the government may not want to condemn the attack on Iran, it could still allow Parliament to express concern about the violation of a sovereign State’s territorial integrity. The world India is navigating in 2026 is too dangerous and too consequential for a foreign policy that settles for knee-jerk reactions, one that prioritises norms over interests.
Happymon Jacob is distinguished visiting professor, Shiv Nadar University, and editor, INDIA’S WORLD magazine. The views expressed are personal
