The US-Israel attack on Iran has redrawn the Middle East’s map, and India has already managed to lose. For decades, New Delhi cultivated a “reputation” for its so-called “strategic autonomy”, maintaining parallel relationships with Israel, Iran and the Gulf emirs and sheikhs while avoiding entanglement in their conflicts.
That carefully constructed edifice has crumbled in days. Nearly ten million Indian citizens live and work across the region, their remittances sustaining countless families and bolstering India’s foreign exchange reserves by billions of dollars annually. Two-thirds of India’s crude oil transits the Strait of Hormuz.
By any rational measure, New Delhi should be central to diplomatic efforts to de-escalate this crisis. Instead, through ill-timed diplomacy, conspicuous silence and visible alignment with one side, India has rendered itself a spectator in its own neighborhood.
The timing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, just 48 hours before American and Israeli warplanes struck Iranian targets, has become the central symbol of India’s diplomatic miscalculation.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri described the visit’s messaging as deliberate — reaffirming support for “Palestinian statehood” while maintaining “principled equidistance” between Iran and Israel.
But in diplomacy, timing is substance. A visit to one party on the eve of its attack on another is not equidistance. It is a choice. International media was blunt: Bloomberg called the trip “suspicious and diplomatically risky,” while an Israeli journalist described Modi’s role as a “cheap advertisement” for Netanyahu’s election campaign.
The Indian opposition went further, accusing the prime minister of “the highest moral cowardice.” Government defenders note that the strikes were planned days before Modi’s arrival, arguing this absolves the visit of complicity.
But this defense misses the point. The issue is not whether India had foreknowledge, but whether it maintained the appearance of balance. By embracing Netanyahu in Jerusalem just as warplanes were warming up, India signaled something no subsequent statement can erase.
The silence that followed has been even more damning. When Iran retaliated against American bases in Gulf countries, Modi posted on X, condemning the attacks. When the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran, killing not only Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but reportedly hundreds of others, the Modi government said nothing.
The Ministry of External Affairs eventually expressed “deep concern,” noting that the situation “evokes great anxiety.” But anxiety is not a foreign policy and concern is not a position.
The opposition Indian National Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi captured the stakes: “Silence, in this instance, is not neutral.” She described the posture not as neutrality but as “abdication” and a “grave betrayal” of India’s traditional balanced approach.
When the United Nations Charter was violated by an attack on a sovereign state’s leader, India—which once championed non-alignment—had nothing to say. That is not the silence of careful diplomacy. It is the silence of a country that has painted itself into a corner.
The most tangible victim may be the Chabahar port, the crown jewel of Indian engagement with Iran. For years, India has cultivated this facility as a strategic asset—a gateway to Central Asia bypassing Pakistan, a counter to China’s Gwadar port and a critical node in the International North-South Transport Corridor.
India has invested over one billion dollars in Chabahar, betting that Iran would remain a reliable partner. Today, with Iran viewing India as aligned with its enemies, these projects hang by a thread. Experts warn that in any post-conflict power struggle, Chabahar risks becoming a hostage to instability.
Officials in New Delhi now express concern that any new leadership in Tehran is likely to scrutinize agreements signed with a perceived adversary. Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan—are not fools. China’s Belt and Road Initiative offers them connectivity without the complications of a hostile Iran.
Russia offers security cooperation. India offers a prime minister who visited Israel on the eve of war and cannot bring himself to utter even a word about Iranian schoolgirl innocents killed by US-Israeli bombs.
The double standard in India’s condemnation has been particularly stark. Modi spoke with the UAE’s president, “strongly condemned” the attacks on Gulf nations and expressed solidarity with “all measures” the UAE deemed necessary. He called Netanyahu and conveyed India’s concerns, calling for an “early cessation of hostilities.”
There was no call to Tehran. No expression of concern for the violation of Iranian sovereignty. No words for the spiritual leader killed in the strike.
This asymmetry has not gone unnoticed. A former Indian ambassador put it bluntly: “PM Modi’s visit to Israel was wrongly timed and has completely ripped India off its neutrality. We are seen in the Israeli corner.” Indian National Congress leader Pawan Khera, meanwhile, drew a devastating contrast with history.
In 1994, when Western powers backed a resolution condemning India over Kashmir, Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao dispatched his ailing External Affairs Minister to Tehran. Iran’s president blocked the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) move and Pakistan’s last serious attempt to internationalize Kashmir collapsed.
“That very ‘friend of India’ stands betrayed—bartered away to please the same Western powers that once thirsted for our blood,” Khera said.
Modi government defenders have offered a pragmatic defense. A senior official outlined India’s core concerns: “Our people in the Gulf, oil trade and broader security interests are at stake. These countries are under attack from Iranian drones and missiles. It’s a call we make in our people’s interest.”
This is the language of realpolitik, of hard-headed calculation about where India’s interests lie. But it begs a deeper question: if India’s interests are so clearly aligned with the US-Israel-Gulf axis, why maintain the fiction of strategic autonomy?
The answer lies in the costs that alignment imposes. By choosing sides, India has forfeited its ability to speak to all parties—precisely the capability it needs when nearly ten million citizens are scattered across a war zone. Those channels, once open to Tehran, are now frozen if not severed.
The Modi government has invested heavily in the narrative of India as an “emerging great power.” Reports suggest India is the only great power whose overall influence continues to expand. However, there is a gap between self-perception and the reality of the great power narrative.
Great powers shape events and geopolitics. They are consulted before strikes, not after. They can speak to all sides because all sides need to speak to them. India today exhibits none of these attributes.
Its diaspora in the Gulf faces an uncertain future, with evacuation impossible due to airspace restrictions and the sheer scale of the population spread across multiple countries. Its energy supplies are vulnerable. Its connectivity projects are at risk. And its voice carries no weight because everyone knows which side it is on.
Here is the harshest arithmetic: whichever side prevails in this war, India loses. If Iran and its allies—China, Russia—emerge strengthened, India will face “unhappy” Tehran and a Central Asia oriented toward Beijing. China is already Iran’s largest trading partner. Any new Iranian leadership is likely to lean even more heavily on Chinese investment.
If the US and Israel win, they will reshape the region according to their interests, not India’s. Washington has already signaled its view of New Delhi’s role: useful junior partner, not strategically equal.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the I2U2 (India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the US), the IMEC (India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor)—all place India in supporting roles, not leadership positions.
A former Army chief, Ved Malik, captured the emerging consensus among the Indian government: “Although India has not taken any side publicly, India’s national interests definitely lie more with the US-Israel and their allies. Thus, a tilt towards them is becoming obvious.”
The smoke rises over Tehran. The missiles fly over the Gulf. And New Delhi has nothing to say that anyone wants to hear. That is not a great power. That is not even a middle power. That is irrelevance—and Modi’s India has earned it.
Bhim Bhurtel is on X at @BhimBhurtel
