By Amal Zadok
India likes to pose as the voice of the Global South, the conscience of BRICS, the ancient civilisation that remembers its friends. But in the space of a few weeks, Narendra Modi has exposed that self‑image as a hollow slogan—by hugging Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump in public, and by standing in tacit silence while the United States sent an Iranian warship, invited to India as a guest, to the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
This is not abstract. “alignment.” It is concrete betrayal.
The embrace of Netanyahu and Trump
Modi did not stumble into this crisis by accident. His late‑February 2026 visit to Israel was designed as theatre: a triumphant march into the Knesset, effusive praise for Israel as a “pillar of strength,” and a made‑for‑TV bromance with Benjamin Netanyahu at the very moment Israel is being accused of genocide in Gaza. India, once a loud supporter of Palestine, chose to appear on camera as Netanyahu’s willing partner while much of the world recoiled from Israel’s conduct.
Layer Trump onto that picture and it gets uglier. Washington under Trump has fused its unconditional backing for Israel with a harsh sanctions regime against Iran and intense pressure on anyone buying Russian oil. Modi has responded not with strategic distance but with accommodation—trying to preserve US indulgence by signaling that India is firmly planted in the US–Israel camp, whatever the cost to its other relationships.
For BRICS partners and the wider Global South, the optics are crystal clear: India is not “non‑aligned”; it is visually, politically, even emotionally aligned with two of the most polarising leaders on the planet, in the middle of a war that has set much of the world’s public opinion on fire.
The warship India invited—and abandoned
Then came IRIS Dena.
Iran’s frigate sailed to India at New Delhi’s invitation, to take part in the Milan 2026 naval exercise—a show of maritime cooperation that India uses to burnish its image as a regional convenor. By all credible accounts, the Dena complied with the rules of the exercise, which bar participating ships from carrying live ammunition. Its crew were paraded as honoured guests in Indian ports, representatives of a proud navy from a fellow ancient civilisation.
When the exercises ended, Dena sailed home. Somewhere south of Sri Lanka, in international waters close enough to India to make any serious power feel personally implicated, a US submarine torpedoed the ship and sent it to the bottom. Dozens upon dozens of sailors died; some reports speak of around 180 people aboard, with fewer than a third rescued, the rest missing or recovered as bodies.
Iran insists the ship was unarmed in accordance with Indian exercise rules and has called the strike a flagrant violation of international law, an “atrocity at sea.” The US, for its part, refuses to concede it did anything wrong but does not dispute two core facts: this was a naval ship and it was coming from Indian‑hosted drills.
Here is the brutal, inescapable truth: a state that invites another’s warship into its waters under ceremonial protection has a special responsibility—moral if not legal—for what happens next. India didn’t pull the trigger. But the trigger was pulled on a guest leaving India’s party, in India’s neighbourhood, after India’s hospitality had created the conditions for the voyage.
From “civilisational bond” to calculated cowardice
How did “Vishwaguru” India respond? With a whisper.
There was no thunderous statement from the prime minister condemning the attack. No emergency press conference at which New Delhi declared that the killing of dozens of sailors who had just left its ports was intolerable, whoever fired the torpedoes. Instead there was a studied, calculated silence—a silence designed not to upset Washington, not to complicate Modi’s photo‑ops with Netanyahu, not to get in the way of India’s carefully curated image as the West’s “responsible” partner in Asia.
Iranian officials and media have been blunt: they describe India’s lack of outrage as a betrayal of a civilisational relationship, a slap in the face after years of cooperation on ports like Chabahar and regional trade routes. They remind India that the Dena was in the Indian Ocean because India invited it and because Tehran still believed New Delhi’s talk about strategic autonomy and respect.
Inside India, opposition figures have attacked Modi for treating the mass death of Iranian sailors off Sri Lanka as a non‑event, arguing that any nation claiming regional leadership had a duty to protest, at least formally, when an invited participant in its exercises is cut down. A country that cannot even defend the dignity of a guest naval contingent on its doorstep has no business lecturing the world about civilisational values.
BRICS, energy and the price of betrayal
The hypocrisy becomes more glaring when you set this against India’s rhetoric in BRICS.
On paper, India speaks the language of the Global South: multipolarity, resistance to unilateral sanctions, collective energy security, new trade corridors beyond US control. It holds up BRICS as a vehicle for rebalancing power away from the West and insists that it will not be bullied into choices that undermine its strategic autonomy.
In practice, India is discovering how expensive it is to betray that promise.
For two years, discounted Russian oil was a lifeline, padding India’s current account and feeding its refineries with cheap crude that could be re‑exported as high‑margin products. That sweet deal is ending. New sanctions and enforcement measures have squeezed the shadow fleet and raised compliance risks, forcing Indian refiners to scale back Russian purchases. Moscow, no longer desperate, has made it clear the era of “friendship pricing” is over; this is just business now, not a political favour.
At the very moment India needs energy flexibility, it has managed to anger another key regional partner—Iran—whose geography is vital for overland trade routes and whose hydrocarbons could have been part of any serious diversification strategy once sanctions shift. Instead of reinforcing a BRICS‑centred, sanctions‑resistant energy architecture, India has sent a message: if Washington torpedoes your ship after you visit us, we will bite our tongue and hope nobody notices.
China, Russia, South Africa and others are watching. They see an India that wants all the benefits of BRICS—prestige, investment, alternative payment systems—without paying the price of true strategic independence from the US security umbrella. They see a country that wraps itself in the flag of the Global South while quietly falling into line when Washington sinks a BRICS partner’s ship almost within sight of India’s own shores.
That is not leadership. It is opportunism—and increasingly clumsy opportunism at that.
A reputation that will not recover easily
The sinking of IRIS Dena will not be remembered, outside Iran and the region, for how many sailors died or which class of corvette went down. It will be remembered for what it revealed about India.
It showed that Modi’s India is willing to invite a sanctioned partner into its exercises, show off that relationship when it suits domestic optics, and then retreat into guilty silence when the United States commits what many see as an act of naked aggression against that partner on India’s maritime doorstep. It showed that all the talk about civilisational bonds, BRICS solidarity and Global South leadership stops the moment it collides with the anxieties of a leadership desperate for Western approval.
India has not just betrayed Iran. It has betrayed its own story about itself.
In the end, no amount of spin will change the image that has burned itself into the memory of every capital from Tehran to Pretoria: an Iranian warship, unarmed under India’s own exercise rules, steaming home from an Indian‑hosted event through international waters; a US submarine striking it down in cold water; bodies in the Indian Ocean; and New Delhi, the self‑proclaimed Vishwaguru, staring at its shoes and saying nothing. BRICS will remember that silence. The Global South will remember that silence. And when the oil is more expensive, the discounts gone, and Modi’s government discovers that Washington’s embrace is as conditional as any other, India will have no one to blame but itself for the day it invited a guest to its table and then watched, mute and compliant, as its new friends dragged him outside and shot him in the street.
References
1.Al Jazeera. (2026, February 22). Modi’s Israel visit: Timeline of India’s relations with Israel, Palestine.
2.BBC News. (2026, February 27). India and Israel pledge to boost ties in defence and technology.
3.Ministry of External Affairs, India. (2026). India–Israel bilateral relations [PDF].
4.Al Jazeera. (2026, February 23). How Modi “broke down walls” between India, Israel – at Palestine’s expense.
5.Al Jazeera. (2026, February 26). From Gaza to defence: Five key takeaways from Indian PM Modi’s Israel visit.
6.Reuters. (2025, November 25). India’s Russian oil binge to end in December as sanctions bite, sources say.
7.Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (2025, November 19). The impact of U.S. sanctions and tariffs on India’s Russian oil imports.
8.Intellinews. (2026, March 9). “Now it’s business, not friendship”: Russia ends discounted oil sales to India.
9.BBC News. (2026, March 6). The final voyage of the Iranian warship sunk by the US.
10.PBS NewsHour. (2026, March 5). Iranian warship was sailing home from India exhibition when U.S. sank it.
11.Deccan Herald. (2026, March 4). Iran’s warship sunk by US was unarmed, attack violates international law, Iranian officials say.
12.The Economic Times. (2026, March 6). Iran slams US attack on “unarmed” vessel returning from India.
13.The Guardian. (2026, March 4). US submarine sank Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast.
14.Bloomberg. (2026, March 4). US sinking of Iran ship piles pressure on India’s Modi.
15.Al Jazeera. (2026, March 4). At least 100 people missing after Iranian military ship sinks off Sri Lanka coast.
16.Naval News. (2026, March 3). US forces sink Iran’s Jamaran-class corvette, CENTCOM confirms.
17. BRICS 2026 Global Eye Intelligence. (2026, February 12–13). BRICS 2026 energy security and India’s blueprint for renewable market integration.
©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.
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