West Asia Crisis Engulfs India: Eight Questions the Modi Govt Hasn't Answered |
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New Delhi: India is staring at its gravest external crisis in years, and yet the government’s choices remain shrouded in spin, not scrutiny. At the centre of this opacity are a handful of decisions and choices that have left the economy, energy security and democracy exposed, which demand clear, public answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet.
Unfortunately, these questions remain unanswered but are pertinent to the lives and livelihoods of Indians, as they grapple with severe consequences of a crisis imposed upon them by the US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
Why was Prime Minister Modi in Israel on the eve of the Iran war?
Prime Minister Modi landed in Israel for a high-profile visit just as the region was on a knife-edge, with US–Israeli tensions with Tehran openly escalating. Within hours of his meetings and the much-trumpeted “upgraded” strategic partnership, the US–Israel joint operation against Iran was launched. The Modi government must explain what its own assessment was before this visit: did Indian intelligence not flag that escalation to open war was a real possibility? If it did, why did the prime minister choose a political photo-op over emergency energy and security planning in Delhi; if it didn’t, what does that say about the quality of India’s strategic assessment under Modi and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval?
Did India really have no warning that war was coming?
US–Iran and Israel–Iran hostilities had been intensifying for months, with open threats, cyberattacks and regional proxies already in play. Yet the Modi government appears to have treated the war as a bolt from the blue, scrambling only after the first missiles were fired. Was there no internal scenario-planning on a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a decapitation strike on Iran’s leadership, or coordinated Western sanctions? Parliament and the public deserve to know whether the failure was of intelligence collection, political attention, or both.
Why did India not build buffers like China – and why are exports still flowing?
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