US Strike on Iranian Warship Tests India's Neutrality Stance

On the morning of March 4, 2026, a single Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo fired by the USS Charlotte, a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, slammed into the hull of the Iranian Navy frigate IRIS Dena south of Sri Lanka [1][2]. The blast killed over 80 of her approximately 180-man crew and sent the vessel to the bottom of the Indian Ocean within minutes [3]. It was the first time a submarine had sunk an enemy combatant ship with a torpedo since 1945 [4].

But the strike's geopolitical shockwave reached far beyond the wreckage. The IRIS Dena had just departed the Indian port of Visakhapatnam, where she had participated in Exercise MILAN and the International Fleet Review 2026 — a 74-nation multilateral naval exercise hosted by India [5][6]. A warship that had been a guest of the Indian Navy days earlier was now at the bottom of the sea, and New Delhi's silence on the matter threatened to expose the carefully constructed scaffolding of India's decades-old neutrality.

A War Begins in the Shadows of Diplomacy

The sinking of the IRIS Dena was one act in a far larger drama. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials, initiating what both governments described as a campaign aimed at regime change [7][8]. Within 48 hours, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) reported it had eliminated Iran's entire naval presence in the Gulf of Oman — reducing 11 ships to zero [9]. By early March, over 30 Iranian ships had been sunk across multiple theaters, including vessels struck in the Indian Ocean [10].

Iran's response was sweeping and chaotic. Tehran launched missile and drone strikes against U.S. bases and allies across the region — hitting targets in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates [11]. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping, and Iranian forces attacked oil tankers and energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Oman [12]. Two tankers — the Palau-flagged Skylight and the Marshall Islands-flagged MKD VYOM — were struck off the coast of Oman [13].

The result was immediate economic havoc. Tanker transits through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed from 24 vessels per day to just four — an 83 percent reduction within 24 hours [14]. By March 9, Brent crude surged past $103 per barrel, on track for its largest single-day jump ever recorded [15].

Source: FRED / U.S. Energy Information Administration; CNBC

Data as of Mar 10, 2026CSV

India's Impossible Position

For India, the conflict presented a diplomatic crisis with few good options. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been in Israel just two days before the strikes on Iran, addressing the Knesset and embracing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what was a high-profile state visit [16]. The optics were devastating: India's leader appeared to be celebrating with one belligerent days before the bombs fell.

When Iran retaliated against American bases in the Gulf, Modi posted on X condemning the attacks. But when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran — killing not only Khamenei but reportedly hundreds of others — the Modi government said nothing [17]. And when the IRIS Dena was torpedoed while returning from India's own naval exercise, it took over 24 hours for the Indian Navy to issue any formal statement [6].

Former Indian Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash called for New Delhi to formally convey "deep concern and displeasure" over a strike that unfolded in its maritime neighborhood [5]. The asymmetry in India's responses — swift condemnation of Iranian attacks, silence on U.S.-Israeli strikes — drew immediate accusations of partisanship.

The Opposition Strikes Back

India's opposition seized on the government's posture with force. Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi described India's silence not as neutrality but as "abdication" — a "grave betrayal" of India's traditional balanced approach to the Middle East [17][18]. She argued that New Delhi's failure to respond to Khamenei's assassination risked "normalising targeted killings as instruments of statecraft" [19].

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and general secretary Priyanka Gandhi both condemned the killing, while party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh called the government's response "a betrayal of India's values, principles, concerns, and interests" [19]. A Congress delegation publicly condoled Khamenei's death, a move that underscored the widening political fault line [20].

Perhaps the most historically resonant criticism came from Congress leader Pawan Khera, who recalled that in 1994, when Western powers backed a resolution condemning India over Kashmir, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao dispatched his External Affairs Minister to Tehran. Iran's president blocked the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's move, and Pakistan's attempt to internationalize Kashmir collapsed [19]. "That very 'friend of India' stands betrayed," Khera said, "bartered away to please the same Western powers."

The Energy Chokepoint

The strategic implications for India extend well beyond optics. India imports nearly 85 percent of its crude oil, and approximately 40 percent of those imports — along with half of its natural gas — transit the Strait of Hormuz [21]. With the strait effectively closed and 20 million barrels per day of global supply disrupted, India's energy security was under immediate threat.

Before the conflict, India had quietly resumed purchases of Iranian crude for the first time in years — importing a shipment worth $111 million in mid-2025, part of $205 million in Iranian oil purchases during the first seven months of that year [22]. That tentative re-engagement is now effectively frozen, along with the broader flow of hydrocarbons through the world's most critical shipping chokepoint.

Indian state refiners and government officials scrambled to develop contingency plans. Reports indicated that New Delhi approached Washington with a proposal: allow India to import oil from Iran and Venezuela if it agreed to scale back or halt purchases from Russia [23]. Indian refiners also moved to secure additional Russian crude as an alternative, reversing earlier efforts to diversify away from Moscow [24].

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Feb 24, 2026CSV

Nine Million Hostages to Fortune

India's vulnerability extends beyond energy. Nearly nine million Indian citizens live and work across the Gulf states — in construction, oil services, hospitality, and retail [25]. These workers, drawn primarily from states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, send home approximately $51.4 billion annually, constituting roughly 38 percent of India's total remittance inflows of $135.4 billion [26].

Iranian missile strikes on Gulf state infrastructure — including drone attacks on ports in Oman and strikes on facilities in the UAE and Bahrain — directly threatened the livelihoods of this vast diaspora [27]. Economists warned that if the conflict extends beyond six months, the impact on remittances alone would have "material" consequences for the Indian economy [26]. The disruption threatens not just national accounts but individual families across rural India, where Gulf remittances have shaped local economies for generations.

CNBC reported that India's exposure encompassed "energy, airlines, and now over $50 billion in remittances" — a trifecta of vulnerabilities that made continued silence increasingly untenable [25].

Chabahar: India's Strategic Anchor, Slipping Away

The conflict has also imperiled one of India's most important infrastructure investments. In May 2024, India and Iran signed a landmark 10-year contract for India to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal at Chabahar Port — Iran's only oceanic port, located on the Gulf of Oman [28]. The $120 million investment, plus a $250 million credit line, was designed to give India a bypass route around Pakistan into Afghanistan and Central Asia, and served as a cornerstone of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which could cut transit times to Russia by 40 percent [28][29].

But the war has gutted those plans. India froze all Chabahar funding in its 2026 budget [30]. The state-owned India Ports Global Ltd (IPGL), responsible for operating the port, saw its government-nominated directors resign en masse, and the company's website was taken offline "to shield officials from potential exposure to U.S. penalties" [31]. India's six-month sanctions waiver from Washington, secured after weeks of uncertainty when the U.S. revoked the original permit in September 2025, expires on April 26, 2026 — with no guarantee of renewal [30][31].

The loss of Chabahar would represent a significant setback for India's ambitions to counterbalance China's Belt and Road Initiative in the region. Without the port, India's access to Afghanistan's mineral wealth and Central Asian energy markets narrows dramatically [28].

The Broader Geopolitical Calculus

India's predicament reflects the impossible geometry of modern great-power politics. New Delhi has spent decades building a "multi-alignment" foreign policy — maintaining strong ties with the United States, Russia, Israel, Iran, and the Gulf states simultaneously. The 2026 Iran war has compressed all of those relationships into a single, unforgiving moment.

The South China Morning Post observed that the conflict "puts India's cherished Middle East neutrality to the test" [32]. Bloomberg reported that Modi faced growing domestic and international pressure to articulate a clearer position [33]. And the Asia Times argued that Modi's silence had already cost India its "voice in the Middle East" — a region where it has $50 billion in annual remittances, critical energy dependencies, and a 9-million-strong diaspora at stake [17].

India also gave another Iranian vessel safe harbor before the strike. Bloomberg reported that an additional Iranian naval ship was allowed to shelter in an Indian port amid the escalating conflict, suggesting New Delhi was attempting to maintain its relationship with Tehran even as it refrained from public criticism of Washington [34].

Meanwhile, CNBC reported that China was actively courting India through BRICS channels, seeking to pull New Delhi toward a more explicitly anti-Western posture on the conflict — adding yet another pressure point to India's calculations [35].

The Price of Silence

India's traditional non-alignment was forged in the Cold War, when Jawaharlal Nehru charted a course between the superpowers. But the 2026 Iran war has exposed the limits of neutrality in an era of total war and instant communication. When a warship that was your guest is torpedoed in your neighborhood, silence speaks as loudly as condemnation.

The opposition's charge of "abdication" resonates because it captures a structural truth: India's interests in the Middle East are too vast and too varied for any single alignment to satisfy them. The country needs American technology and investment. It needs Gulf oil and remittances. It needs Iranian transit routes. And it needs to maintain credibility with all of these partners simultaneously.

The sinking of the IRIS Dena did not create India's dilemma — it merely made it impossible to ignore. As bilateral trade with Iran worth over 15,000 crore rupees hangs in the balance, as the Chabahar waiver ticks toward expiration, and as oil prices remain above $100 per barrel, New Delhi faces a reckoning that no amount of strategic ambiguity can resolve [36].

Whether India can navigate these crosscurrents without being pulled under will depend on diplomatic skill, economic resilience, and a willingness to make choices that the country has long avoided. The era of comfortable neutrality, it appears, has reached its expiration date.