India has not issued a statement on the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Prime Minister Modi visited Israel on 25–26 February — 48 hours before the campaign began. There is no suggestion the visit was connected to operational planning. The Indian government has offered no comment on the timing or on the strikes themselves.
The opposition Indian National Congress broke the silence to condemn the assassination of a head of state — a formulation that invokes the principle rather than the specific target. The INC's framing echoes India's traditional non-alignment posture, rooted in the Nehruvian doctrine that the killing of a sovereign leader sets a precedent threatening all states regardless of their internal politics. India abstained on previous UN votes related to the conflict, and silence is the continuation of abstention by other means.
India's position is a structural bind with no clean exit. India was, until the reimposition of US sanctions, one of Iran's largest oil customers. The Chabahar Port agreement — signed in 2016 and expanded in 2024 — gives India its only trade corridor to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan. On the other axis, India has become one of Israel's largest defence customers, with cumulative arms procurement exceeding an estimated $10 billion over two decades. Israel is India's third-largest weapons supplier. Modi and Netanyahu have built one of the closest bilateral relationships between any two heads of government. Any statement Delhi makes damages one of these relationships irreparably.
Domestic politics tighten the constraint further. India's approximately 200 million Muslim citizens — the world's third-largest Muslim population — are a constituency the BJP cannot entirely disregard, and the INC's condemnation is designed to mobilise exactly that. Delhi's calculation is that the cost of speaking exceeds the cost of silence on every axis. The question is how long silence holds if the war expands or if evidence emerges that the 25 February visit involved any foreknowledge.
