The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia

Why India Is Right to Support the US and Israel in the Iran War

What good would it do India to hitch itself to the sinking ship of Iran, instead of its actual partners, such as Israel and the UAE?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, Feb. 26, 2026.

India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and much of the Indian population have tacitly taken the side of the United States and Israel in their recent war against Iran.

Just before the war commenced, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel, where he delivered a warm speech to the Knesset, with the aim of building on previous economic and security ties. The timing of Modi’s trip strongly suggests that he had foreknowledge of Israel’s plans. After the war started, neither Modi nor his foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, signed a condolence book at the Iranian embassy for Iran’s assassinated supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. India joined 130 other countries to cosponsor a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution condemning Iran for its attacks on Gulf states and demanding a halt to hostilities by Tehran.

It’s clear that India’s sympathies are with Israel, the Gulf states, and the United States, countries with which it has had close dealings. And on the street, many ordinary Indians – other than those on the left or the Muslim community – express support for Israel, citing the shared fight against terrorism and past Israeli assistance for India.

This makes sense. What good would it do India to hitch itself to the sinking ship of Iran, instead of its actual partners, such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)?

If the Iranian regime survives, it would be heavily sanctioned and surrounded by hostile neighbors, many of whom it attacked during the conflict. India could hardly gain much from trading with such a state, nor would it garner any geopolitical advantage from a regime that could fall any day. On the other hand, India has much stronger economic, geopolitical, and people-to-people ties with the Gulf states and Israel. In short, strong support of Iran offers India little.

If the Iranian regime were to fall, India has much more to gain from an Iran that can trade freely once it is mainstreamed back into the international system. Likewise, it would be easier to establish diplomatic relations with a leadership that isn’t viewed by the rest of the world as pariahs. Like China, India should aim to be agnostic to the nature of the regime in Iran, so long as it functions as a reliable partner. And there is no way that the current government of the Islamic Republic of Iran can be a reliable partner for anyone at the moment.

Furthermore, despite the concern that many Indian political figures have expressed about the violation of Iran’s sovereignty, many also welcome the precedent, desiring to do to Pakistan what Israel did to Iran. It would be difficult to condemn what happened in Iran if the Indian security establishment desires to knock out Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership and infrastructure in a similar manner.

However, at the end of the day, India’s stance is not driven by its desire to support the U.S. and Israeli move to seek regime change in Iran through a bombing campaign. Rather, it stems from an understanding that India’s overall geopolitical........

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