Asmatwali
Introduction
India’s approach to Iran and Israel is being tested more seriously than before. As tensions in West Asia have sharpened, New Delhi has had to protect several interests at once: diplomatic ties, strategic projects, trade routes, energy flows, and its broader regional credibility. What makes this policy important is that India is not dealing with two ordinary bilateral relationships; it is trying to manage ties with two rivals whose conflict increasingly shapes the wider regional order.
Background
India’s relationships with Iran and Israel have grown in very different ways, but both are important to its foreign policy. Israel has become a strong partner in agriculture, innovation, and strategic cooperation. At the same time, Iran continues to matter for connectivity, regional access, and India’s long-term westward outreach through Chabahar Port. Because of this, India cannot afford to look at West Asia through a simple either-or lens.
This balancing policy has become more significant as conflict in the region has begun to affect issues directly affecting India. In February 2026, the Ministry of External Affairs expressed concern over developments in Iran and the Gulf and called for restraint, de-escalation, and diplomacy. In April 2026, India again stressed the need for stability, pointing out that conflict in the region was affecting global energy supply, trade, and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
These official responses reveal an important truth: for India, the Iran–Israel rivalry is no longer a distant geopolitical issue. It now has direct implications for India’s economic security, diplomatic flexibility, and regional interests.
Functioning
India’s policy works through a practical form of differentiated engagement (a strategic approach where a nation tailors its diplomatic, economic, and security relationships with different countries based on their specific political contexts, interests, and geopolitical importance, rather than applying a rigid, one-size-fits-all doctrine). It does not treat relations with Iran and Israel as mutually exclusive; instead, it deals with each country according to the specific interests involved. This allows India to deepen cooperation with Israel in some sectors while preserving strategic space with Iran in others.
In the case of Israel, cooperation is broad and highly visible. The Embassy of India in Tel Aviv notes that the India–Israel Agriculture Project has become a flagship initiative, and the bilateral agricultural work plan for 2023–2028 includes collaboration in water management, horticulture, mechanisation, post-harvest technology, and capacity building. During the February 2026 prime ministerial meeting, both sides elevated the relationship to a “Special Strategic Partnership for Peace, Innovation and Prosperity”, underscoring the partnership’s continued institutional expansion.
India’s engagement with Iran is narrower, but it remains strategically important. The clearest example is Chabahar Port. According to official Indian data released in May 2024, Rs. 400 crore had been allocated for the development of Shahid Beheshti Port between FY 2016–17 and FY 2023–24, with Rs. 201.51 crore already utilised. A Rajya Sabha reply in November 2024 further stated that India Ports Global Limited signed a ten-year contract with Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organisation on 13 May 2024 and that the port had handled over 450 vessels, 134,082 TEUs of container cargo, and more than 8.7 million tonnes of bulk and general cargo since 2018.
At the diplomatic level, India’s language has also been carefully measured. Its public statements repeatedly emphasise restraint, diplomacy, civilian safety, and de-escalation. This style of response is deliberate because it helps India avoid being pushed into a rigid camp while maintaining open communication with both sides.
Performance
The recent performance of India’s policy can be judged by looking at continuity, strategic retention, and diplomatic consistency. On the Israel front, cooperation has remained active in practical sectors, especially agriculture and innovation. The elevation of ties in February 2026 suggests that regional instability has not stopped the relationship from moving forward.
On the Iranian side, the biggest indicator of continuity is Chabahar. The ten-year contract, signed in May 2024, gave India a stronger, more durable operational role than before. Official figures also showed a 43 per cent rise in vessel traffic and a 34 per cent increase in container traffic in 2023–24, indicating that the port remains strategically and commercially relevant. (Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, 2024; Rajya Sabha, 2024).
India has also shown notable consistency in its crisis messaging. Across different moments of tension, its official position has remained broadly the same: avoid escalation, support diplomacy, protect civilians, and maintain regional stability. This consistency matters because strategic autonomy only has meaning when it appears as a sustained policy practice rather than a slogan.
Still, the policy has limits. India has managed to keep ties open with both Iran and Israel, but it has not escaped the deeper contradiction built into that balancing act. As regional confrontation intensifies, maintaining equal credibility with both sides becomes harder.
Impact
The most significant impact of this policy has been the preservation of India’s room for manoeuvre in West Asia. By refusing to reduce the region to fixed camps, India has maintained working relationships with multiple actors amid growing polarisation.
While this multi-alignment serves as the structural framework for how the policy functions, its practical achievement is measured in tangible strategic insulation. For example, during acute regional escalations, New Delhi successfully leveraged its dual access to maintain critical energy trade flows and to directly negotiate the security of its assets—such as securing the release of Indian nationals from seized vessels—even as standard Western diplomatic channels remained entirely gridlocked.
Ultimately, this flexibility prevents India from being forced into costly geopolitical dilemmas, fitting closely with its broader attempt to project itself as an autonomous actor in a multipolar world.
Another important impact is continuity in real projects. Cooperation with Israel continues to produce visible institutional outcomes, especially in agriculture and technical exchange, while engagement with Iran remains tied to connectivity and regional access through Chabahar. This gives India’s West Asia policy a material foundation rather than leaving it at the level of mere diplomatic language.
There is also a narrative impact. India’s repeated stress on dialogue, restraint, sovereignty, and de-escalation helps project the image of a state that prefers stability over bloc politics. In diplomatic terms, this strengthens India’s claim that strategic autonomy is not passivity, but an active attempt to preserve independent judgment in a conflict-prone region.
At the same time, this policy does not remove hard choices forever. It creates flexibility, but it does not eliminate pressure. If rivalry turns into a prolonged confrontation, India may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the same balance without facing sharper diplomatic trade-offs.
Emerging Issues
The crisis is deepening faster than India’s public doctrine is evolving : India has responded carefully, but it still lacks a fully articulated public framework explaining how it balances expanding ties with Israel and continued strategic engagement with Iran.
Chabahar remains valuable, but vulnerable : The port is strategically important, yet its long-term effectiveness depends on a wider regional environment shaped by instability and geopolitical pressure.
Energy and maritime risks are growing : India has itself acknowledged that conflict in West Asia can affect global trade and energy movement, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz.
The Israel relationship is becoming more visible than the Iran relationship : This may create an impression of asymmetry, even when India still sees both ties as serving different strategic purposes.
Strategic autonomy needs stronger institutional backing : Diplomatic statements are important, but they need to be matched by coordination across foreign policy, commerce, energy, shipping, and crisis management institutions.
Way Forward
India should continue its policy of engaging Iran and Israel through separate but carefully managed channels. That approach remains the most realistic one for a country whose interests in West Asia are broad, layered, and sometimes competing. But the next stage of policy cannot rely solely on flexibility; it also requires clearer strategic articulation.
A more explicit West Asia doctrine would help explain why Israel matters to India in technology, agriculture, and strategic cooperation, while Iran remains important for connectivity and geopolitical access. At the same time, India must prepare more seriously for disruptions to shipping and energy supply, as well as for crisis diplomacy, so that its regional policy is not overwhelmed by sudden escalation.
To make this defensive strategy functional, India must prioritise one core, cross-ministerial initiative is to operationalise a Permanent Maritime Contingency Task Force composed of operational leaders from the Indian Navy, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. This task force will be mandated to implement a formalised “Blue-Water Escort Protocol” (institutionalising and expanding on previous temporary initiatives such as Operation Sankalp).
In the event of military escalations or non-state actor threats in volatile chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab-el-Mandeb, this protocol automatically triggers continuous Indian naval escorts for all Indian-flagged commercial vessels and crude oil tankers. To ensure commercial viability during crises, the task force will provide state-underwritten sovereign maritime insurance guarantees to private shipping lines, ensuring that India’s vital energy inflows and trade routes with both sides of the Gulf remain completely insulated from external geopolitical pressures.
If India can balance diplomacy with stronger institutional planning, it will be better positioned to sustain relations with both sides without losing strategic credibility. In that sense, the challenge is not simply to remain balanced, but to make that balance durable under pressure.
About the Contributor
Asmatwali is a research and editorial intern at IMPRI. He is a scholar at Aligarh Muslim University, working on the Iran–Israel rivalry in a multipolar world and its implications for India’s foreign policy since 2014.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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Acknowledgement
The author expresses his sincerest gratitude to IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute) for providing him with the opportunity to prepare this policy update article and for fostering a rigorous learning environment that connects research with public policy practice.
He also extends his sincere thanks to Samyuktha Balachandran and Tulsi Kumari
for their valuable feedback, useful suggestions, and support in shaping this article.
This article was posted by Yashkirti Pal, a Research and Editorial Intern at IMPRI.
