Mar 09, 2026 13:13 pm IST

Opinion | Iran-Israel War And The Limits Of India's 'Strategic Autonomy'

India needs to figure out how to manage the fallout of the Middle East crisis without letting strategic autonomy start to look like a slogan.

Syed Akbaruddin Syed Akbaruddin

In its first week, the conflict around Iran has spread across the Gulf and moved closer to India's maritime neighbourhood. For India, this is not a distant geopolitical theatre. It is an energy shock in the making, a shipping risk, a remittance risk, and a human-security problem. The conflict has already claimed Indian lives. Few countries are as exposed to this crisis and as well connected across the region as India is.

In such circumstances, caution was the correct instinct. The question is no longer whether India should be cautious in responding to this widening conflict. The question now is whether caution, by itself, is enough. The External Affairs Minister's statement in Parliament today underlines how serious the situation has become.

In India, the crisis is no longer being seen only through markets, migration, and maritime routes. It is also being read through the language of sovereignty and strategic autonomy. A war framed through pre-emptive force, leadership decapitation, and widening retaliation raises questions that many feel cannot simply be brushed aside.

Two Critical Incidents

Two recent American actions have pushed those concerns into sharper focus.

The first is maritime. The torpedoing of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka has altered the geometry of the war. In India, this is not seen as just another battlefield incident in the Gulf. The vessel had taken part in India's fleet review in Visakhapatnam. That matters. It reinforces the uneasy sense that a war once........

© NDTV