New Delhi, March 3: Questioning the government’s silence on the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, veteran Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has said silence, in this case, is not “neutral”, but an “abdication”. In a column for The Indian Express, the former UPA spokesperson has written that Delhi’s ties with Tehran are “civilisational as well as strategic” and reminded the Narendra Modi government of the several occasions Iran came to India’s aid.The Centre has not issued a statement on Khamenei’s death, but has called for restraint and de-escalation in the Middle East region. Sources in the government have said its measured stand mirrors the response of major global powers and that diplomatic responses prioritise national interest.
“On March 1, Iran confirmed that its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, had been assassinated in targeted strikes carried out the previous day by the United States and Israel. The killing of a sitting head of state in the midst of ongoing negotiations marks a grave rupture in contemporary international relations,” Gandhi said, adding that Delhi’s silence stands out equally starkly.
“Initially, ignoring the massive US-Israeli onslaught, the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) confined himself to condemning Iran’s retaliatory strike on the UAE without addressing the sequence of events that preceded it. Later, he uttered platitudes about his ‘deep concern’ and talked of ‘dialogue and diplomacy’ — which is precisely what was underway before the massive unprovoked attacks launched by Israel and the US,” Gandhi said.
“When the targeted killing of a foreign leader draws no clear defence of sovereignty or international law from our country and impartiality is abandoned, it raises serious doubts about the direction and credibility of our foreign policy,” she added.
Pointing out that the assassination was carried out without a formal declaration of war and during a diplomatic process, she wrote that if such acts pass without principled objection from the world’s largest democracy, the erosion of international norms becomes easier to normalise.
“The unease is compounded by the timing. Barely 48 hours before the assassination, the Prime Minister returned from a visit to Israel, where he reiterated unequivocal support for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, even as the Gaza conflict continues to draw global outrage over the scale of civilian casualties, many of them women and children,” Gandhi said.
The Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson added a Kashmir reminder. “In 1994, when sections within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation sought to advance a resolution against India at the UN Commission on Human Rights over Kashmir, Tehran played a consequential role in blocking that effort. That intervention helped prevent the internationalisation of the Kashmir issue at a delicate moment in India’s economic trajectory,” she said.
“Iran has also enabled India’s diplomatic presence in Zahedan near the Pakistan border -a strategic counter-balance to the development of Gwadar port and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” she wrote.
“The present government would do well to remember that in April 2001, the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during an official visit to Tehran, reaffirmed warmly India’s deep ties with Iran, both civilisational and contemporary. “His acknowledgement of those long-standing relations seems to hold no relevance for our current government,” Gandhi said.
“India’s ties with Israel have, in recent years, expanded across defence, agriculture and technology. It is precisely because India maintains relations with both Tehran and Tel Aviv that it possesses diplomatic space to urge restraint. But such space depends on credibility. Credibility, in turn, rests on the perception that India speaks from principle rather than expediency,” she said.
Gandhi also said it is a strategic necessity because of the large number of Indians settled in the region. “Nearly 10 million Indians live and work across the Gulf. In past crises – from the Gulf War to Yemen to Iraq and Syria – India’s ability to safeguard its citizens has rested on its credibility as an independent actor, not as a proxy,” she argued.
Gandhi said that for India, which seeks to represent the Global South, “the optics of acquiescence carry real costs”. “Why should countries in the Global South trust India to defend their territorial integrity tomorrow if it appears hesitant to defend that principle today?”
“India has long invoked the ideal of vasudhaiva kutumbakam ‘” the world is one family. That civilisational ethos is not a slogan for ceremonial diplomacy; it implies a commitment to justice, restraint and dialogue, even when doing so is inconvenient. At moments when the rules-based order is under visible strain, silence is abdication,” Gandhi said.
