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 o