Six Reasons Why Pakistan as US-Iran Interlocutor Is a Strategic Setback for India |
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The emergence of Pakistan, alongside Egypt and Türkiye, as a primary back-channel interlocutor between Iran and the United States is a stinging strategic setback for New Delhi. For a government that has staked its reputation on isolating Pakistan and projecting India as the indispensable Vishwaguru under Narendra Modi’s personal leadership, this development is nothing short of a political and diplomatic catastrophe.
One of the most humiliating points in independent India’s diplomatic history, it exposes the directionless grandstanding of Modi’s foreign policy.
Here is why this is a major setback for India.
1. The collapse of Modi’s ‘Isolate Pakistan’ policy
For a decade, the cornerstone of Modi’s foreign policy has been the attempt to render Pakistan diplomatically irrelevant – reckless, isolated and incapable of responsible regional stewardship.
This news proves that the strategy has failed spectacularly. When the stakes are highest, such as preventing a regional conflagration between a global superpower and a regional heavyweight, the US turned to Asim Munir, not to Modi. This is a clear signal that Pakistan remains a crucial pivot state, not diplomatically irrelevant, while India’s attempts to make its neighbour a pariah have been ignored by the very leaders Modi claims to have won over. It hands narrative space and leverage to Islamabad at a time when India has allowed to be boxed in by US sanctions pressure on Iran and is seen mostly defending its energy lifelines rather than shaping the crisis. For all the chest-thumping about isolating Pakistan, it is Modi’s India that looks isolated when it actually mattered and it should have stepped up.
2. Personal humiliation for Modi
When the global narrative is that “Pakistan helps avert escalation” and “India frets about Hormuz and tariffs”, it is politically humiliating for a leader who has repeatedly sold himself domestically as the man who made India a central pole in global........