Positive geopolitics has been rather elusive in the last few years. Bloodshed, war, and uncertainty have shaped political stresses among and within nations.
It would have been a welcome respite to write about the positive momentum in India-Europe relations, reinforced by Friedrich Merz’s successful visit and the steady arrival of European leaders in New Delhi as the new year begins. Yet, my attention has kept drifting to Iran, and to the protestors who once again dominate the fraught moral, political, and security landscape of an already unstable Middle East. There are several implications for India.
To strike or not to strike
It was not even 48 hours ago that reports of an imminent US strike on Iran began circulating late at night, compounded by corresponding ground movement of assets. Experts were frantically refreshing social media feeds to ensure they hadn’t missed signals.
It wasn’t the first time US President Donald Trump would have done the unprecedented. Less than a year ago, he had ordered the advanced B–2 bombers to bomb Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow. Those strikes were part of the Twelve-Day War Israel had launched against Iran for dismantling its nuclear program. It was also part of the broader Israeli campaign to weaken Iran and decapitate its proxies after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack.
It looks like Trump decided against new strikes on Iran that would reportedly not have resulted in a quick and decisive fall of the Ayatollah Regime—an opinion that seems to be conveyed to Trump by none other than Bibi himself. This reflects a reality check on the part of Israel, whose air defences were particularly strained in last year’s war. A hurried strike on Iran now resulting in a prolonged campaign would strain them further.
That said, one doesn’t know what Trump and his coterie are actually planning. He has shown a certain penchant for noncommittal public statements, only to strike with an element of surprise later. The fate of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has only added to the anticipation.
There continues to be a strong case for Israel to capitalise on this opportunity to decisively decapitate Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. However, without a solid cover from the US, such unilateral action by Israel seems unlikely. There is a consensus among experts that the window of a “Round 2” from Israel, aided by the US, is closing and must be done well in time for the US midterms approaching in November.
From India’s perspective, though, no emerging scenario in the Middle East appears genuinely favourable. Two of these contexts are worth examining.
First, if the Iranian regime falls, it’ll be acutely destabilising as the conflict would spread to Kurds, Baloch, Azeris, Syrians, and Israelis. But if the regime stays weakened and sanctioned, it would be worse.
Second, India’s interests are constrained by the various other rifts in the region, particularly that between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The former, New Delhi’s main partner, appears on the back foot as the latter drifts to brothers-in-arms Pakistan and Turkey.
Also read: Iran protests — why India cannot be a mute spectator
Systemic conflict vs statecraft
Israel has continued its sustained campaign against Iran’s network of proxies. Iran is under pressure both internally and externally. Syria remains fractured. Turkey and Israel are emerging as more assertive regional powers. To add another faultline, long-managed tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now manifesting as irredeemable rifts. The Middle East today is not experiencing a single crisis, but a crisis-confluence.
Predictably, New Delhi has adopted a careful and calibrated posture toward complex conflicts in the region at large. But caution itself offers little comfort.
For developing a coherent response, India must understand what has held the Middle East’s strategic tension together so far, and how it is changing—with the US acting as the ultimate stabiliser among competing actors. India had thus developed its multialignment with several opposing camps in the region, and with quite a success too.
India engaged Iran for oil (before it was sanctioned), for strategic depth in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and for a footing to reach Central Asia. It further utilised its goodwill with Iran and Russia to envision the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a complementary connectivity route to reduce dependence on the Suez Canal route. New Delhi also envisioned the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) corridor to leverage its goodwill with the main players of the GCC and Israel. The move built on the normalisation of the Abraham Accords from Trump’s first term. The IMEC, already a logistics nightmare, has run into perpetual difficulties because of the region being at war since 2023. Both projects, unfortunately, have succumbed to the region’s persisting instability.
With Iran, India sought to reduce Afghanistan’s reliance on Karachi Port—particularly as Kabul is being aggressively courted by China. India positioned Chabahar as a strategic alternative. It reinforced this commitment by investing $120 million in one of the port’s two terminals before sanctions took effect. The six-month sanctions waiver granted by Trump in November 2025 showed that, despite the US President’s abrasive style, Washington did not look too keen on dismantling India’s multialignment. Influential individuals such as Elbridge Colby viewed India’s empowerment as a necessary counterweight to China.
Recent developments, however, have eroded and undermined this logic. Following renewed sanctions, government directors on the board of India Ports Global Ltd resigned en masse. The website of the state-owned entity overseeing Chabahar was taken offline to “insulate” those associated with the project from US sanctions.
Before assuming that trade can continue and Chabahar can still be utilised, it is important to recognise the harsher reality. The Trump administration has imposed 25 per cent tariffs on countries trading with Iran. With the India-US trade agreement still not done, New Delhi has little incentive to antagonise Washington—with a bilateral trade of about $1.6 billion—over Iran. One may still argue that trade could be resumed later.
The broader damage lies elsewhere. The uncertainty and financial risk associated with dealing with sanctioned countries make it nearly impossible to attract private capital or de-risk investments. This directly undermines India’s longer-term plans, including extending the INSTC to Armenia—where India is already the largest defence supplier—playing on Armenia-Azerbaijan normalisation to counter Turkey’s rapid rise in the Caucasus.
As Karim Sajadpour argued succinctly in his latest piece, Iran’s post-Khamenei political order could take multiple forms: clerical continuity, military dominance, nationalist strongman rule, populist revival, or some hybrid configuration unique to Iran’s historical experience. Put simply, if the Ayatollah regime collapses or is sufficiently weakened to align with the US, Tehran would likely curb trade with Russia and other sanctioned actors, constraining India’s options. Conversely, if the regime continues, it will invite harsher sanctions, producing similarly restrictive consequences for India’s strategic calculus.
Also read: India is derisking itself from US bullying. Here are eight signs
Added discomfort
India must not only protect its regional interests with Iran but also prepare for a soft landing amid the Saudi-UAE rift, which is generating new and uncomfortable patterns of convergence.
The opening created by this rift has enabled a closer Riyadh-Ankara alignment—a development India must watch closely as it is likely to complement Saudi-Pakistan defence cooperation directly or indirectly.
At present, there is no confirmation of a new defence geometry or a tripartite pact among Riyadh, Islamabad, and Ankara. However, Pakistan has long positioned itself as a revolving door for technology, human resource, and intel flows linking China, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the Middle East—well before Trump’s re-engagement with the country began. All this indicates a new challenge for India as it has developed its own clout of strategic convergence with several of these players, but hasn’t been on the table to shape the conversations around ending conflicts—the case in point is Gaza and Armenia.
The Saudi-UAE rift also affects countries around the Bab-al-Mandeb and Red Sea, including Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen and Somalia—where the proxy war between Riyadh and Ankara is being played out with embedded weapons and money flows through a wide network of proxies. With Abu Dhabi presently on the back foot, India needs to monitor developments and proactively engage emerging convergence between the UAE and Israel to ensure strategic opportunities are not lost.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)