When leaders make foreign policy decisions, each may appear reasonable in isolation. However, their cumulative impact can be strikingly different from what was originally intended. As Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, India’s deepening engagement with Israel perhaps falls into that category. What was once a mutually beneficial partnership between New Delhi and Tel Aviv seems to have become more of a habit than the product of serious strategic deliberation. Yet, sound policy cannot be guided by the momentum of habit, for habit and strategy often pull in opposite directions.
A reconfigured region
For one thing, it is important to acknowledge the gains from the partnership between India and Israel. India has received considerable military technology and know-how from Israel, as well as expertise in intelligence gathering derived from their extensive counter-insurgency experience. However, the more important question is not only what this relationship provides today, but also what it forecloses over time. Judged on those terms, the picture is not particularly encouraging.
West Asia has been undergoing one of its most intense geopolitical reconfigurations in years, and this one is different in scale. For the past decade, the region’s regional arithmetic has rested on the assumption that Iran was a wounded, sanctions-strangled actor whose reach could be curtailed and ambitions contained. That assumption has now been tested and found wanting. American and Israeli military strikes on Iranian facilities have not produced the strategic calm that Tel Aviv had hoped for at the outset of this costly campaign. Iran responded with retaliatory missile and drone salvoes and, more importantly, demonstrated that any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could not be easily overcome by the rhetoric of carrier groups. Once again, the geography of energy has become the geography of coercion. The terms of the final agreement quietly confirm that Iran was not broken.
The last three months have made it clear that the United States-Iran confrontation is not a distant geopolitical contest for New Delhi. It has had a direct impact on India’s economy. Most of India’s oil imports pass through routes vulnerable to any prolonged conflict in the Gulf. Whenever the Strait of Hormuz becomes a flashpoint, the consequences are felt directly in Indian households. It is here that the strategic canvas becomes more complicated, with every diplomatic choice carrying economic consequences. Strategic flexibility requires shunning comfortable alignments.
Many strategic analysts have long believed that Washington’s policy towards Israel is fixed and unchanging — a constant around which all regional policy revolves. That assumption now needs to be revised. The public differences between Washington and Tel Aviv, reflected in U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent outbursts against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are no mere diplomatic squall. They appear to be genuine, notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s well-known idiosyncrasies, because Washington’s strategic calculus in West Asia has changed faster than expected.
The U.S. urgently needs off-ramps, while Mr. Netanyahu, whose political survival is bound up with escalation, has little interest in de-escalation without achieving his maximalist objectives. The friction becomes evident when the patron and the client are at odds, and the once-blank cheque starts to float.
Iran cannot be ignored
Thus, the perception of a shift towards Israel, reflected in Mr. Modi’s unexpected visit to Tel Aviv (February 25-26, 2026) just before the U.S. and Israel launched their coordinated attack on Iran (February 28, 2026), becomes riskier when it is made more explicit, as it could place India on the wrong side of a regional reconfiguration that neither Israel nor any third party can control. While Mr. Modi’s personal absence from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral is unsurprising, the choice of India’s representatives is itself a deliberate signal. Pairing Minister of State for External Affairs Pabitra Margherita with Bihar Governor Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (retired) — himself a soldier-scholar shaped by counter-insurgency experience — may be read as a calibrated posture of political reassurance, while also subtly reflecting India’s religious pluralism.
In other words, it reflects a posture that has internalised the war’s central lessons without yet being willing to say aloud that Tehran’s coercive capacity, demonstrated through the Strait of Hormuz and the missile exchanges, cannot be managed through the optics of Tel Aviv alone. This choice conveys an important diplomatic message of reassurance to Iran, which has demonstrated that it remains a regional heavyweight.
Moreover, Iran is a civilisational state with deep-rooted political and ideological networks across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, as well as the proven capacity to generate economic pressure that can bypass conventional military deterrence.
A nation that can dictate ceasefire terms to Mr. Trump after absorbing punitive strikes from the U.S. and Israel is not a nation that can be casually discounted. China also appears poised to expand its strategic and economic footprint in Iran, making it imperative for India to exercise greater caution. Greater alignment with Israel risks pushing Tehran further into the China-Pakistan strategic embrace.
There is also the matter of Europe, an underutilised and undervalued element in India’s economic planning. India must recognise that Europe’s political landscape has turned against Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon in ways, and at a pace, that would have been unimaginable two years ago.
More than sentiment, electoral arithmetic is at work. And electoral arithmetic often shapes trade policy and, eventually, the tone of bilateral negotiations. India’s status-seeking desire to be seen as a responsible international actor, rather than merely a vast market, and its economic ambitions in Europe — including the operationalisation of the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement — may come under closer scrutiny in the context of its West Asia policy than New Delhi anticipates.
What is unusual about the present moment is that India has no option but to act strategically, independently, and decisively. It has leverage because it has maintained good relations with many Arab Gulf states, from which millions of Indian workers send remittances home. Although Saudi Arabia may once again have found tactical reasons to accommodate Rawalpindi (Pakistan), India’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates has grown even stronger.
New Delhi’s historical ties with Tehran, though constrained by shifting regional dynamics, have not been completely severed. More fundamentally, India’s sheer size combined with its geostrategic attributes makes it an indispensable stakeholder in any emerging regional order. What India needs now is the political will to wield its leverage effectively in pursuit of clearly defined national objectives.
Beyond binary choices
India needs a sufficiently ambitious strategic imagination. But that does not mean choosing between Israel and Iran, for that would be far too simplistic, and history rarely rewards such simplifications. Herein lies the distinction between an adaptive, alignment-driven foreign policy — the kind that follows and adapts to alignments forged by others — and an architectonic foreign policy, which seeks to shape its own strategic environment.
For a country that claims to be ‘Vishwabandhu’, it is important to recognise that the credibility of such a claim will be tested in moments such as these, when the world is watching India’s words and actions. New Delhi’s most valuable strategic asset in the coming multipolar decade is its authentic voice as a champion of the Global South, and every visible alignment with Israel in a conflict in which the Global South overwhelmingly sympathises with the Palestinians risks putting that precious capital in jeopardy. The defence technologies provided by Tel Aviv are undeniably valuable. But the strategic price of appearing aligned in a conflict that has reshaped West Asia is no less real.
Vinay Kaura is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs and Security Studies at the Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, Rajasthan, and Non-Resident Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore