Kamal Ghorui
Mind the gap: Under US pressure, India has gradually distanced itself from Iran. But it should go back to its traditional role as a bridge between rival blocs
Isolating its adversaries has always been a preferred US tactic. But historically, India opposed this strategy. Most recently, it ensured that Moscow wasn’t shut out of the world
India’s silence on the Iran war has sparked an intense debate between those who accuse New Delhi of shirking its moral obligations and those who argue that condemning US-Israeli aggression would be an empty gesture. Missing from this debate is a more important question: What role did India play in the long-term isolation of Iran?
Under pressure from Washington, New Delhi has gradually disentangled itself from Tehran over the past decade and a half, especially in the last six years. Today, it has practically no economic or strategic interests left in the Persian state. This shift contributed to Iran’s growing international isolation, forming part of the broader conditions that set the stage for the current conflict.
Isolating its adversaries has always been one of Washington’s preferred strategies. The US uses economic sanctions not only to punish its rivals but also to sequester them from the rest of the world. Historically, India opposed this strategy. It maintained the policy of abiding by only UN sanctions, and not those imposed unilaterally by the US, as articulated by former foreign minister Sushma Swaraj.
Isolation makes states vulnerable and provokes them into risky, desperate actions. Even after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, New Delhi continued to support Beijing’s entry into the United Nations because it believed that keeping China cut off from the world would make it more bellicose.
This belief shaped India’s broader approach. As the largest country outside rival blocs, it has often acted as a safety valve, maintaining ties with isolated states, easing polarisation, and preventing them from drifting entirely into the orbit of America’s principal adversaries, once the USSR and now China. Most recently, India’s insistence on continuing its ties with Russia was important in ensuring that Moscow wasn’t shut out of the world and wholly dependent on Beijing.
India constructed its friendship with Iran in the 1990s, at a time when the US was encircling the West Asian state with new sanctions. In the early 2000s, as Washington ratcheted up the sanctions pressure on Tehran and dubbed it part of the ‘Axis of Evil’, New Delhi moved to deepen its relationship. Under Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, India committed to a cluster of interlocking projects to bring the two countries closer, including development of Chabahar port, Zahedan rail line, Farzad-B gas field, and the India-Pakistan-Iran pipeline. Iran also became one of its biggest petroleum suppliers.
The tightrope walk began after New Delhi forged a strategic partnership with Washington in the mid-2000s. It made concessions to placate the US, such as voting against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency and shelving the proposed India-Pakistan-Iran pipeline. However, it refused to accede to American sanctions or provide diplomatic support to Washington. During a tense moment in 2008, when the US and Israel threatened to attack Iran, India issued a pre-emptive statement that such a military strike would be “unacceptable international behaviour” that would destabilise the entire region.
American officials believed that Indian defiance stemmed from the allure of cheap oil or adherence to strategic autonomy. However, the Indian policy of resisting what it called “counterproductive” sanctions also served the larger, geostrategic goal of maintaining stability in the region.
In 2012, US pressure finally succeeded in forcing India to reduce its crude oil imports from Iran after much bickering, though it remained one of the largest purchasers of Iranian oil. In 2019, when President Trump launched the “maximum pressure” campaign after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, India stopped imports of crude oil from Iran to preserve its strategic relationship with the US. American pressure also unravelled its major investments. The Chabahar port, the last surviving major project conceived in the Vajpayee era, is now teetering under the threat of US sanctions, though New Delhi is in talks with Washington for a waiver to safeguard its interests. Of course, India was not the only nation to sever ties with Iran under American pressure, but it was one of the most significant ones. China, willing to withstand US coercion, remained Iran’s only major economic partner.
Iran’s isolation in the last six years has predictably destabilised the entire region. The US and Israel correctly assumed that no one would object to the current war except China and Russia because no one had economic stakes in Iran. The same isolation also led Tehran to take desperate measures such as attacking its neighbours and closing the Strait of Hormuz.
If India wishes to play a role in stabilising West Asia in the future, its path lies not just in making principled statements or offering to mediate, but in a long-term strategy of deliberate economic integration with all major actors in the region.
Bhardwaj is a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
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