Five years after the February 2021 military coup and eight weeks after the general elections were held, Myanmar is getting ready, once again, to transition from military rule to a ‘hybrid democracy’ stipulated in the 2008 Constitution. A civilian government, which shares powers with the Tatmadaw or the Armed Forces, will be formed in April, with a new president and a vice president elected in the coming days. The new Parliament has already been convened.

This is a re-enactment of the political landscape of March 2011, following the 2010 elections, except that hope prevailed then, whereas scepticism and despair now rule in many quarters. Myanmar analysts view it as less of a transition to democracy and more of a transition from “a military-clad dictatorship to a civilian-clothed one.”[i]

The new leadership is facing multiple crises. First, the West Asia conflict has risked dramatically deepening Myanmar’s problems and obscuring it from the international view. The UN special rapporteur on human rights points out that humanitarian aid for over 3.5 million people displaced due to the Myanmar civil war is likely to dwindle further as international organisations shift their focus and resources to West Asia.[ii]

Second, even after the elections, armed clashes between the military and the resistance have not ceased. They continue with varying intensity and frequency across several parts of the country, including the Kachin, Shan, Chin, Karen, and Rakhine states. Aerial strikes by the Tatmadaw and attacks by select Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) on government troops, with civilian casualties being a regular feature, have continued unabated.

Yet, there is little doubt that the military situation has turned in favour of the government. The Tatmadaw has come a long way since October 2023, when the Operation 1027 of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, composed of Ta’ang, Kokang, and Rakhine EAOs, inflicted a series of humiliating defeats on government troops in the northern Shan State. Through a mix of retreat, reinforcement, and securing China’s crucial support, Naypyidaw eventually gained ground to the extent that two years later, it succeeded in holding elections in 80% of the country’s townships in a peaceful environment.

Now, military strategists are busy re-arranging the political chessboard. Speakers for the two houses of Parliament have been selected from among the top army or police personnel. The trusted colleagues of Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing staff the senior-most positions of the Tatmadaw. The only uncertainty is about him. The option of his retirement, which was touted before the elections, is off the table. He aspires to be the next president, while retaining effective control of the Tatmadaw. Moves are afoot to get him elected president and to enable him to serve as chair of the newly created Union Consultative Council, which will oversee all state functions. With him at the apex of the new power architecture, political opposition and many EAOs are unlikely to participate in any national dialogue the government may try to convene. Thus, Myanmar may well have to live with a continued and costly stalemate.

The international situation, too, favours the military government. Apart from China, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Indo-China region (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), and Thailand are all inclined toward this status. ASEAN, saddled with its failed Five Point Consensus formula, may still take more time to craft a fresh basis for dealing with the new military-civilian government. The UN, the U.S., and the EU remain opposed to the emerging political configuration, but they are far too distracted elsewhere to pay much attention to Myanmar. Yet, some in Washington have begun advocating a ‘calibrated engagement’ with the military to counter China’s mounting influence. The lifting of long-standing sanctions on Myanmar will help establish goodwill.

India’s traditional ‘two-track’ policy of cultivating cooperation with the military government and extending political and moral support for the cause of democracy has delivered largely satisfactory results. However, now in the fast-changing context, the time has come to factor in recent developments that necessitate a more nuanced policy. For instance, New Delhi should engage with the new civilian government as early as possible.

Three key challenges are relevant here.

One, China’s footprint has expanded considerably since the coup. Beijing’s triple role – as a reliable partner of several EAOs, a friend of the military, and a mediator between the two sides – has been markedly successful. In contrast, India wisely avoids getting involved in internal conflicts. But it is constrained by indefinite delays in completing its mega projects, such as the Trilateral Highway and Kaladan multi-modal transport projects, due to the unstable security situation. Bilateral trade has increased, but few new development projects have been announced. The completion of some projects will demonstrate good intent and ease the lives of ordinary people.

Two, the military’s loss of control over large parts of the western region bordering India has motivated New Delhi to adopt a policy of ‘benign engagement’ with the EAOs that control this region. However, there is a vast gap between the expectations of one side and the capabilities of the other. Hence, the effectiveness of this policy needs to be re-examined if India is to see visible benefits and see some of its initiatives move ahead.

Three, new challenges have appeared in the Northeast. These are a significant increase in drug trafficking; expansion of cybercrimes along the Myanmar-Thailand border with the involvement of a large number of Indian IT professionals; illegal inflow of arms into India; and, as the recent case of a U.S. citizen and six Ukrainians apprehended by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) shows, the growing involvement of external forces that help Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs) operating from Myanmar. Speaking recently in Delhi at a conference at the United Service Institution of India (USI), a senior Army official asserted that India’s handling of insurgencies in its own border areas, its work on healing ethnic tensions, and its efforts to reduce external influences have improved the situation today. But other experts point out that it grows ever murkier with shades of grey dominating the entire security and strategic landscape in the Northeast.

Another dimension is the government’s attempt to improve border management through ‘hybrid fencing’ along the entire 1,643-kilometer-long border with Myanmar and by suspending the Free Movement Regime. The Indian establishment is fully committed to them, whereas at the people’s level in a few Northeastern states, discontent prevails. A delegation of experts from the Ministry of External Affairs visited the area in mid-March 2026 to gather perceptions of government policy and returned with valuable inputs about ground realities.

Indian policymakers must closely monitor how Myanmar’s second shot at limited democracy evolves, given the wide gap between the government and the opposition. They should also ensure that India-Myanmar border management promotes better relations with Myanmar and a more effective security and social environment in the Northeast.

In the end, however, the Southeast Asian nation’s political transition will be shaped by its own leaders, elites, and the people themselves. Their internal dynamics will determine the exact blend of hope and despair for Myanmar’s future.

Rajiv Bhatia is the Distinguished Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies and a former ambassador.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

Support our work here.

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

References:

[i] ‘Myanmar Parliament says to start process to select new president on March 30’, The Straits Times, 20 March 2026, The quotation is attributed to independent analyst Htin Kyaw Aye.  https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/myanmar-parliament-says-to-start-process-to-select-new-president-on-march-30

[ii] ‘Mideast war risks dramatically deepening Myanmar crisis: UN expert’, Mizzima, 13 March 2026, The quotation is attributed to Tom Andrews. https://eng.mizzima.com/2026/03/13/32130

The post Myanmar’s second shot at limited democracy appeared first on Gateway House.

On 11 April 2026, the entire world tuned in to find out the outcome of the talks between the U.S. and Iran. Then came the statement from U.S. Vice President JD Vance conveying that the talks had failed. What the future holds for the ongoing conflict is now uncertain.

How did Iran perform in this war? Iran was expecting this war. The U.S. moved its aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, from the West Pacific to the Gulf, a process that took almost three weeks. It also repositioned its air assets to its West Asian bases. All of this gave Iran sufficient warning and preparation time.

Iran began building its reserves of drones and missiles following Operation Midnight Hammer. The Shahed-136 drones, which Iran used extensively, are relatively cheap—costing between $7,000 and $10,000—and can be produced in the hundreds each month. Initially, Iran deployed these low-cost drones and older missiles to draw out the air defence systems of Israel and the U.S., which are significantly more expensive and harder to replace. This strategy weakened the air defences of both Israel and U.S. bases.

Subsequently, Iran was able to penetrate these defences. This is how Dimona, which houses Israel’s nuclear programme, was targeted. Iran also expanded the conflict to other Gulf countries by attacking U.S. bases there, which came as a surprise to Washington.

An even greater surprise to both the U.S. and the wider world was Iran’s move to close the Strait of Hormuz (SoH). Technically, it was not fully closed. Iran allowed Chinese tankers to pass through first, followed by vessels flagged by India, Pakistan, and Turkey. Japan was later added to the list. Nevertheless, this selective restriction triggered a global energy crisis. (See Chart 1 below for the flow of oil through the SoH.)

The biggest surprise, however, was Iran firing two missiles with a range of nearly 4,000 km towards Diego Garcia. Although both were neutralised, the move shocked the Americans, who had believed Iran’s missile range to be capped at around 2,000 km.

Despite losing a significant portion of its navy and air force, and having much of its air defence system neutralised, Iran demonstrated a remarkable ability to absorb damage. Its pre-planned structure for operating in the event of a decapitation of leadership was activated. This system is known as “Mosaic Defence”.

To understand Mosaic Defence, it is necessary to examine the organisation of Iran’s armed forces. (See Chart 2)

Following the Islamic Revolution, Iran established the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) alongside its regular army. It serves at the pleasure of the Supreme Leader, and its role is to protect the regime’s ideological integrity. The IRGC mirrors the structure of conventional armed forces, encompassing all arms and services. It is specifically trained to execute Mosaic Defence.

In the event that Iran’s leadership is eliminated, the IRGC is designed to function as 31 independent units, operating autonomously without waiting for centralised orders. One unit is assigned to Tehran, while the remaining 30 correspond to the country’s provinces. These units are also expected to defend their respective areas through layered defensive strategies in case of a ground offensive by an enemy.

On February 28, 2026, when Iran’s leadership was wiped out, Mosaic Defence was activated. Notably, the Basij, a paramilitary organisation, maintained internal security throughout the conflict.

What are the lessons from this conflict?

First, technology can at best act as an enabler; it cannot win wars on its own. If it could, the U.S. would have won every conflict it has fought—which is clearly not the case.

Second, resilience matters. Both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Gulf conflict demonstrate that a determined and resilient country can hold off major powers, but at the cost of casualties and infrastructure damage.

Third, lower-end technology, when used innovatively, can counter high-end systems. Iran’s effective use of Shahed-136 drones and older missiles significantly enhanced its staying power against the U.S.

Fourth, eliminating a country’s leadership does not guarantee regime change or victory. Iran had been preparing for this moment for over 45 years, and it had watched the U.S. tactics of regime change over the decades, and recently with Venezuela’s Maduro. Its plan to quickly put in place an alternate leadership has been successful. For the aggressor, at best, such actions may offer psychological satisfaction

Fifth, while populations may be dissatisfied with their governments, external aggression can lead to internal unity. In Iran’s case, the wider public, which had come out in large numbers – 5 million – in January 2026 to protest the dire economic conditions of the country, was met with a violent crackdown and deaths and has stayed indoors through this crisis. Intimidation by Basij also ensured this. The regime’s supporters, however, have been on the street, with their sentiment  aligned against Israel and the U.S.

Sixth, the use of AI-enabled precision targeting has prevented significantly higher casualties on both sides. Iran, the U.S. and Israel have used AI to ensure precision targeting. There are reports that China and Russia assisted Iran by providing accurate target information and data. It has been widely reported that China has integrated Iran into its Beidou 3 satellite system, which provides positioning, navigation and timing that has increased the accuracy of targeting the enemy manifold.

Lastly, supply chains for critical resources are becoming increasingly fragile. First the Russia-Ukraine conflict and now the Persian Gulf War have disrupted energy supply chains, with global repercussions. Consequently, even countries not directly involved in conflicts are experiencing a significant impact.

What is the way forward?

This war will leave lasting scars—not only on the participants but also on countries far removed from its epicentre. Although the talks in Islamabad have failed and the U.S. has announced a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Washington will continue to explore exit options, as its goal of neutralising Iran’s nuclear capability has not yet been achieved.

The U.S.’ global standing may diminish somewhat. Its inability to swiftly conclude the conflict against a weaker adversary, coupled with limited allied support, will contribute to this perception. The conflict may negatively impact the Republican Party in the U.S. mid-term elections scheduled for November 2026.

One of the most significant implications will be for the transatlantic relationship. The lack of support from NATO allies has been a point of concern for Washington. President Trump’s recent references to Cuba suggest that, following a resolution in the Gulf, the U.S. may shift its focus there before the mid-term elections in November and look for support from NATO.

Iran, on its part, though weakened, is unlikely to abandon its nuclear programme. It has drawn lessons from Ukraine—particularly the consequences of relinquishing nuclear capabilities. Iran will continue its sub-conventional support to non-state actors, potentially leading to increased acts of terrorism.

The U.S. is believed to have entered the conflict under pressure from Israel. If the outcome proves unfavourable for Washington, it could strain U.S.-Israel relations. However, as international relations rarely involve permanent alliances or rivalries, ties are likely to recover over time. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu may face domestic political challenges due to growing dissatisfaction within Israel.

Divisions between Iran and the Gulf countries may deepen, further isolating Iran. Weaker states will study the experiences of Ukraine and Iran to develop strategies for dealing with stronger powers.

Countries worldwide will prioritise seeking and building alternate, resilient supply chains, particularly for food, fuel, and fertilisers. With Iran’s capture and commercialisation of the Strait of Hormuz, other countries abutting key global waterways and straits will look at the example set by Iran – the Taiwan, Malacca, Gibraltar, and Bering straits, for example. A new model will have to be developed to work around potential choke points.

Finally, the nature of warfare will continue to evolve. Outcomes will no longer be determined solely on the battlefield; economic strength, trade leverage, and technological capabilities will increasingly shape results.

All along, China has remained a silent supporter of Iran. It is closely observing this conflict, as it has with other wars, and will likely incorporate the lessons into its own military doctrine. Mizarvision, a Chinese company that has its government’s backing, has tagged each and every asset of the U.S. and Israel, making a detailed study of operational capabilities and patterns. China will expand its strategic oil reserves from the current 130 days to 180 days.

India, in contrast, has stayed away from the fray, emerging largely unscathed due to its policy of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment. It has focused mostly on ensuring its domestic fuel needs are met, and practiced back-door diplomacy focused on securing its energy supply and the welfare of its diaspora in the Gulf. The country’s immediate goal must be to continue to diversify its sources of oil and gas. In the intermediate term, India would benefit from studying this conflict in detail and integrating the lessons into its own warfighting strategies.

Lt Gen S L Narasimhan is the Adjunct Distinguished Fellow for China and National Security Studies at Gateway House.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

Support our work here.

© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

The post How did Iran fight this war? appeared first on Gateway House.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) will soon complete 60 days in power, and the journey so far has been more difficult than expected. For one, the ruling party’s relationship with the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami has become bitter particularly over the issue of introducing Constitutional reforms through a referendum since Rahman took the oath of office at the South Plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban in Dhaka on February 17, 2026. Second, it has become quite clear to Bangladeshis that in the past two months that Rahman will not follow in the footsteps of his mother and former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Begum Khaleda Zia’s footsteps but will walk the path of a strongman governance style of his father and ex-President Zia-ur-Rahman, the military dictator who seized power in 1977.

Rahman, the 11th Prime Minister of Bangladesh, has initiated several measures focused on economic stability, governance reform, and normalising foreign relations. Rahman formed a 59-member cabinet, comprising 25 ministers and 23 ministers of state. He has emphasised that accountability will apply to everyone, stating that “not even the prime minister” will be able to abuse power with impunity.

“I want to build a Bangladesh that will stand high in the world’s court, not the dominance of anyone,” Rahman recently stated.

His priority is to boost the country’s economic growth, which has been decelerating after the previous Awami League government was ousted in 2024. The BNP’s ambitious election manifesto declares its intention to more than double the economy by 2034, from $450 billion to $1 trillion – that’s an ambitious 9% growth rate.

Bangladesh’s economic growth has taken a massive hit post the ousting of the Awami League government led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who continues to reside in hiding in India. In 2023-24, Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves plummeted by nearly half, to $26.7 billion from $46 billion in 2020-2021. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) fell to $554 million in 2024-25 from $667.56 million in 2023-24, which was already a low number. ^[1]

Like his father, Rahman identified anti-corruption measures as a top goal for his government. In his inaugural speech, he stressed that maintaining peace and order “at any cost” is a core objective, declaring that chaos will not be tolerated. When Rahman came back to Bangladesh in December 2025 after spending 17 years in the United Kingdom under a self-imposed exile, the first commitment he made to a people who were then under the rule of Muhammad Yunus’s interim government, was that that he would chart a new path for the country under his infamous slogan, “I have a plan.”

Rahman’s plan is now being slowly unveiled in the form of a nationwide anti-corruption drive. He has directed the country’s intelligence agencies to strictly monitor MPs and ministers in order to ensure transparency and accountability at all levels of the administration, as part of his 180-day reform plan to recover assets smuggled abroad, target money laundering and financial crimes. The government has pledged to ensure that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), judiciary, and law enforcement agencies operate without political interference.

In an effort to overcome the political polarisation amongst the supporters of the BNP, Awami League and the Jamaat-e-Islami, Rahman had promised some far-reaching reforms such as a top-down, no-tolerance approach to corruption, ensuring accountability for government officials and ending the culture of revenge. He vowed to rebuild the state institutions and implement large-scale economic and social reforms.

However, so far the BNP has not taken any such steps that prove that it is serious about bringing about reforms in the country, which it had promised by way of addressing some of the crucial reform ordinances. These ordinances were introduced by the caretaker government after seeking the public’s views and opinions on how to bring about a transformation in the country. They were drawn from the July Charter that was drawn up to accommodate the aspirations of Bangladeshis post the 2024 ouster of Hasina. But earlier this month, the Parliament passed only 97 out of the 133 ordinances that were laid down there. The ones that the government allowed to relapse were meant to bring in judicial independence, prevent enforced disappearances, and strengthen institutions such as the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Human Rights Commission.

Analysts and experts within Bangladesh have been critical of the government’s lackadaisical approach toward these reforms and the expiry of ordinances, which should already have become law. Despite the referendum receiving nearly 70% ‘Yes’ for the above changes, the BNP had been reluctant to act on the measures. The July Charter^[2] forms the basis of the referendum. It was drafted by a National Consensus Commission under the interim government led by former chief advisor Yunus, it aims to rebuild democratic institutions, which they felt had been abused and misused by the Awami League government, and prevent future authoritarian rule where a prime minister can be allowed to rule for multiple terms.

Nahid Islam of the National Citizen Party (NCP), who is in the opposition as an ally of the BJI, has come down heavily on the government stating that it has “broken its promise to the nation” which had agreed to take up the reforms laid out in the referendum as soon as it took the reins of government.

In its external relations and steering of its foreign policy, Bangladesh is prioritising its own national interests under a ‘Bangladesh First’ policy while cautiously rebuilding ties with India amid tensions over the extradition of former PM Hasina. Both nations are engaging to manage security, economic, and energy needs.

With India, Dhaka has sought to address some of the fundamental challenges ailing two-way ties, which were visible even during Hasina’s era. Recently, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman undertook his first foreign visit, and his maiden visit to India since taking charge, accompanied by Humayun Kabir, the Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Rahman, who was previously the National Security Advisor (NSA) for Bangladesh, and his advisor Kabir, met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval, Minister of Petroleum Hardeep Singh Puri and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.

The main issues discussed between both sides revolved around security, especially in the border areas, sharing of river waters; and reviving robust people-to-people ties. It was a good first step, but the war in Iran has forced Dhaka to look at critical issues of food and fuel, and it has been unable to chalk out a solid roadmap for its foreign policy. In the wake of a major energy crisis, Dhaka has reached out to India for a supply of diesel, and India has provided 5,000 metric tonnes of diesel via the India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline, over and above the 10,000 metric tonnes that are usually sent to them.^[3]

The bonhomie with India has worked alongside the BNP government’s stated goal of safeguarding the national interest under the nomenclature Bangladesh First.  In this, Rahman brought up the issue of effective yet humane border management especially with regard to killing of civilians who cross over the border, and of fair water-sharing as a fundamental concern. Rahman reiterated that renewing the Ganges Water Treaty, which expires in December 2026, and decisively addressing the equitable sharing of vital rivers like the Teesta are imperative steps that would transform public perceptions and foster closer ties between the nations.

The journey ahead is daunting for the BNP both domestically and externally. At home, the government must address the internal challenges of bringing stability and undertake a plethora of difficult reforms. Externally, Rahman will have to walk a tightrope in the near term: reset ties with India but also balance it when dealing with China, a large investor in Bangladesh. It’s an unenviable position, but one that he is determined to manage well.

Nayanima Basu is the Adjunct Fellow at Gateway House and an author. 

This interview was exclusively recorded for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

Support our work here.

© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

References:

[1] Bangladesh Economy Spirals Downwards.” Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. https://www.gatewayhouse.in/bangladesh-economy-spirals-downwards/

[2] International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Bangladesh: Rahman Wins but Faces Challenges.” IISS Online Analysis, February 2026. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2026/02/bangladesh-rahman-wins-but-faces-challenges/

[3] The latter is sourced from the Numaligarh Refinery in Assam and is part of a regular, long-standing energy trade agreement designed to help Bangladesh combat fuel shortages. India has been supplying diesel from the Numaligarh refinery to Bangladesh since 2017 through various modes, which include waterways and rail and later through the India-Bangladesh friendship pipeline.

The post Bangladesh’s bumpy road ahead appeared first on Gateway House.

Discussions held in Delhi between the governments of India and Bangladesh during Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman’s visit (April 7-9) have consolidated the reset of the bilateral relationship.

After over 15 years of bilateral warmth, often termed ‘the golden chapter’ during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long tenure in power, relations quickly turned southward following her ouster in August 2024. The February 2026 election results brought an end to the Muhammad Yunus-led regime, alleviating strained relations and offering fresh opportunities for the two nations to mend ties. Both sides worked on it: Rahman’s visit was preceded by the December 2025 visit of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to Dhaka for the funeral of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, followed by the presence of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri at the inauguration of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman in February 2026. Khalilur Rahman reciprocated these meaningful gestures with his visit.

Was it a mere ‘stopover’ in the Indian capital for him as he later proceeded to Mauritius to participate in a conference on the Indian Ocean, jointly hosted by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and India Foundation, or a full-fledged ‘official visit’? A revealing clue lies in the list of dignitaries Rahman met and those he did not. He held discussions with the external affairs minister, the minister for petroleum and natural gas, and the national security adviser, but he did not meet the minister for commerce and industry, the home minister, or the minister for water resources, and more importantly, he was not given an opportunity to pay a courtesy call on the prime minister.

Hence, Rahman’s visit was an intermediate stage in the journey towards a full India-Bangladesh reset. He will probably continue his conversations with his counterpart Jaishankar in Mauritius, and they may reflect together on operationalising the key decision taken at their official dialogue in Delhi: “to explore proposals for deepening the partnership through the relevant bilateral mechanisms”, as announced by the MEA^[1] India’s desire to engage constructively with the new Bangladesh government was conveyed, and plans were made for follow-up meetings, presumably at senior official levels.

Given the twin factors of geography and history, India-Bangladesh relations span multiple domains, making it inevitable that developments in one sphere, such as internal politics, affect another, such as the economy. Rahman’s first port of call was Ajit Doval, the national security adviser, on April 7, the very official he had met in November 2025, when Rahman served as Bangladesh’s national security adviser under Mohammad Yunus. This is a positive sign, perhaps indicating that the new Bangladesh government is conscious of India’s essential red line: New Delhi will be optimally cooperative with a friendly neighbour that is willing to respect its needs and sensitivities on security issues.

From the Bangladesh side, Rahman seems to have carried an extensive list of requests. They are grateful for India supplementing their diesel supplies due to the Gulf War but want more. Restrictions on visas, imposed by India due to previous unfriendly acts, are hurting Bangladesh; these will soon be eased, especially for business and medical visas. There have been concerns about the fast-approaching end-2026 deadline to renew the 1996 River Water Sharing Treaty. Technical and official-level talks need to commence soon, and they will.

Bangladesh also made a request for Sheikh Hasina’s extradition, if only for form’s sake. It was more emphatic about the extradition of two alleged Bangladeshi killers of a radical leader, Sharif Osman Hadi, who were arrested by the Kolkata police. This could be agreed to, subject to normal judicial procedures.

On illegal immigration from Bangladesh, Dhaka continues to reiterate its traditional position: neither the state nor the society causes it, but both remain deeply concerned over what they describe as tough measures by India, including ‘border killings’. Riaz Hamidullah, Bangladesh’s High Commissioner in Delhi, suggested that killing a cattle smuggler is excessive, advocating for an approach that benefits the common people.

The impact of developments in Bangladesh on the polls in Assam and Bengal is natural and inevitable. Likewise, electoral results may influence Dhaka’s future approach towards India.

What India expects from Bangladesh has not been adequately disclosed, but deepening connectivity and continuing relevant projects remain top priorities.

The two capitals also need to align more closely on regional cooperation and integration. India has lost interest in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for good reason. Instead, it has committed to strengthening and bolstering BIMSTEC, or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, in whose development Bangladesh played a vital role and even hosts the BIMSTEC secretariat. Instead, some voices from Dhaka are calling for the revival of SAARC. Delhi needs to convince its Bangladeshi interlocutors to resume the effort to turn BIMSTEC into an effective instrument for the mutual benefit of all its members.

Before the Rahman visit began, there was some speculation that it was a preparatory trip for a visit to India by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman. That seems premature. Officials and ministers need to work harder in the coming weeks before a head-of-government-level interaction, paving the way for tangible outcomes.

The two countries have much to gain through deeper cooperation and more to lose if they drift. As during Covid, the Gulf War has brought India’s neighbours in the north, south and east closer together, with aid provided by New Delhi for daily energy essentials. This is the time to focus on a common future by initiating bold trade and economic policies and linkages to counter the vested interests in the region and beyond that work overtime to create a rift between India and Bangladesh.

Rahman indicated that the Bangladesh government follows a foreign policy based on the principle of ‘Bangladesh First’. India is still committed to its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy. The two neighbours must commit to staying on the same page and upholding the values of mutual resilience, respect, and reciprocity.

Rajiv Bhatia is the Distinguished Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies and a former ambassador.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

Support our work here.

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

References:

[1] ‘Meeting of the External Affairs Minister with the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh’, Ministry of External Affairs, 8 April 2026, https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/41031/Meeting_of_the_External_Affairs_Minister_with_the_Foreign_Minister_of_Bangladesh_April_08_2026

The post Delhi-Dhaka make progress appeared first on Gateway House.

Following the U.S.–Iran ceasefire and partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, energy flows may resume but uncertainty persists. Natural gas shortages will continue to disrupt fertiliser production and fuel inflation world-wide. And, as Robin Mills, CEO of Qamar Energy and Amit Bhandari, Senior Fellow on Energy, Investments and Connectivity, Gateway House, tell Lara Farrar, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs fellow at Gateway House. Iran will retain leverage and go on influencing prices and supply chains.

Q. Lara Farrar (LF):

Robin, since you’re joining us here from Dubai, what is your sense of the situation and what it will take to get oil flows, energy flows going back through the Strait of Hormuz?

A. Robin Mills (RM): The U.S. could stop the war at any point and can stop the attacks and go home.

But that doesn’t mean that the conflict ends, and it doesn’t mean that normal transit through the Strait of Hormuz is restored because Iran, of course, is the one making that decision right now. If Iran is not compelled to allow transit by military force, by escorted convoys, it can continue to keep the Strait closed, pretty much close to 90%- 95% closed indefinitely.

One of Iran’s objectives in this is to make this whole episode very painful for the U.S. so that it’s not repeated. Iran does not want to be in the state that it was in June last year where there was a short war.

Iran is damaged. There’s a ceasefire. But none of the underlying issues are solved.

Secondly, to maintain some ongoing control, a few ships are being allowed to pass and paying some kind of a toll.

Part of the Iranian objective is to formalise that and indeed have that kind of control over vessels that have to get approval. The money is not insignificant. If you look at the number of ships coming and going out of the Gulf and the reported amounts of money paid, just the oil tankers alone, you can be talking $5-6 billion a year, which is pretty substantial for Iran, to put into rebuilding its military forces and therefore strengthen its ability to control the Gulf and so on.

But also the political element. We’ve seen Iran do deals to get out ships under individual political deals, whether that is with India, Pakistan, Thailand or with China. These ships are allowed out under a deal and an agreement, and Iran is using that leverage pretty deliberately. That’s a pretty worrying and uncomfortable situationfor the Gulf countries, who are obviously dependent on this on the strait for all of their oil exports and plus other commodities going out and coming in. But also for other countries who are dependent on that. Imagine that India or Bangladesh or Japan or South Korea really wants to have to do a deal with Tehran every time they need to get something. So that strikes me as an Iranian objective, and it may well be one that’s achieved for a period of years, even months, let’s say, or even years, a year or two, but not one that’s very stable either and still sets up a longer phase of uncertainty, insecurity and higher energy costs.

Q. (LF): Does that mean that a lot of countries will have to start figuring out different logistics routes in terms of procuring energy, different supply lines? Does this shift energy flows to any degree, particularly for the countries that have been impacted kind of east of the Suez Canal? Are we seeing the beginning of a shift in supply chains at all?

A. (RM): At some point, a large part of that normal transit will resume because of the political pressure on Iran. Iran needs to balance how it uses this leverage in a kind of a post-war scenario. But yes, it’ll be probably still a restriction of flows out of the Gulf. But even if flows return to normal, let’s say, pre-war levels, there’ll always be that uncertainty, that risk, and that will mean that countries will diversify their supply routes. They will look for routes to get supplies in and out of the Gulf. Don’t go through the strait, bypass pipelines. The obvious ones, maybe rail, maybe road in different directions. And they will look to develop oil and gas suppliers and customers that are not on the strait, and there’s a wide variety of those in the Americas, particularly in Africa. All of those places are going to see greater attention, greater investment.

(LF): Some of the EU leadership encouraging the rationing of fuel. What will be the impact for the EU in terms of diversification of energy and how they’ll sort of cope with this moving forward?

(RM): In the short term, the EU’s options are limited on oil and gas, and they already activated what they could in 2022 in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and , it almost eliminated their dependence on Russia and Russian gas. They’ve phased out the use of Russian oil. But in terms of other suppliers, they go to the usual suspects. They go to Norway and Algeria and Libya and so on. There’s not really much more to come. Otherwise, practically, they get more dependence on the US. Longer term there will be a new impetus in the EU for getting off reliance on oil and gas entirely. So further increasing renewables, electric vehicles. That was already done extensively after 2022, but there’ll be even more of a push for that.

Q. (LF): Amit, can you talk just a little bit about what’s been going on with India? How this has led to some issues with fuel access here, where India is doing OK. India is coming out in terms of just having the infrastructure to cope with this, but also some of the weak points where the government might need to think more about supply issues in the future, should something like this happen again.

A. Amit Bhandari (AB): I will look at two fuels first, the first is liquid, which is petroleum, and second is LNG or natural gas. In case of LNG, imports have been hurt substantially because Qatar is one of the big suppliers. And the result has been that a lot of industries which rely on natural gas as a fuel have had to shut down. This includes certain tile manufacturers in Gujarat, for example. Luckily for India, natural gas is possibly 6%- 7% of our energy mix, which is, I think, the lowest amongst all the large economies.

Most of our electricity comes from coal. To that extent, India will be less affected by what has happened in the natural gas market compared to practically all the larger economies.
In case of liquid petroleum fuels, there was an initial shock of the supply stopping out of Hormuz, and since then, India has started purchasing more oil from Russia, as it was doing in the past. There is a sufficient commercial buffer within the country to have offset that changed supply sources. By and large, India has a surplus of petroleum refining capacity, which means that we produce sufficient diesel, petrol, aviation fuel for our own needs and we export some.

We will not be running out of any of these fuels anytime soon. There has been about, I think, a 10% loss of global oil supply. So as long as we are able to buy the crude, which we are, we won’t run short of these fuels. The one finished product that we do import is liquefied petroleum gas, which is butane that you use in cylinders for cooking, and there we rely on imports for almost, I think, 60% out of our requirements.That is the one place where we have run short. So industrial and commercial use of LPG or butane has pretty much stopped and supply has been prioritised for households. So the primary pain point for India in case of oil is really the price.

What was 65-$-70 earlier is now about $100, and we are paying an extra $5 billion dollars a month. In case of natural gas, industrial supply has been shut down, and if the shortage persists, we will have a problem on food inflation maybe two or three months down the line because natural gas is an input for urea manufacture. Other than that, we are doing as well as we could under the circumstances.

(LF): You brought up Russia, the energy sector has been progressively sanctioned since 2014. Do either one of you want to comment on what this means for Russian oil and gas flows at all?

(RM): There’s been obvious attempts by the U.S. to kind of free up those Russian oil and gas. Let’s say not gas to be honest, but oil certainly anyway, they unsanctioned oil on water that was in transit. They go through some big numbers, 130 million barrels of Russian oil in transit. Probably about 30 million of oil that was genuinely kind of looking for a buyer. They did the same with the Iranian oil. It’s kind of remarkable, that the result of this war was so far to relax sanctions, not just on Russia, but on Iran too, and the objective therewas to ensure that China just didn’t simply buy up this oil at a discount, but that other countries had a chance to buy it, including India, of course. And we’ve seen the first arrival of fuel from Iran to India for several years now because this relaxation of those sanctions. The U.S., despite what they said, they didn’t condition those payments.

So Iran should actually have access to those payments. It wasn’t as previously being locked away in some escrow account. That was a change. It’s a testament to how hasty and poorly thought through this sanction reversal was. But from the Russian point of view, means higher prices for Russia, not a higher base price and a lower discount. Not as good for India in that regard, in the sense that India doesn’t have access to the same discounted Russian oil.

In fact, if anything, the Russian oil is possibly trading at a slight premium now, Now that other countries, not just China, but others as well, can buy it. The Russian oil exports are constrained by the Ukrainian attacks on their facilities, which have been pretty successful and quite damaging recently. So I’m not sure that we can see a lot of new Russian oil suddenly appearing on the market. If anything, the Russians are kind of also struggling to keep up their exports.

(LF): Obviously, there are some alternative supply routes, pipelines to get oil out of the region. They have a certain capacity and then maybe a little bit more of an excess capacity above that. Do you have a sense of is that infrastructure, how it’s being used currently? Is it at full blast? Can it take some more capacity to try to ease some of the disruption from the Strait of Hormuz right now? Any other additional infrastructure that could be brought online to transport oil through alternative routes?

(RM): So pre-war Strait of Hormuz was carrying about 20.5 million barrels per day of oil. About 15 million of crude and the rest in refined products, about one and a half million of that being LPG, liquefied petroleum gas. From the bypass pipelines, we’re really talking about 15 million of crude. About 1.7 million of that could go through Fujairah in the UAE pipeline to there. That was being used pre-war already. So the extra amount is perhaps 1.7 million, and then the Saudi East West pipeline, which runs to Yanbu on the Red Sea, that has capacity of 7 million barrels per day. Some of that’s then used domestically. So about 5 million of exports. And from what we’ve seen in recent days, that has been used out of capacity. So indeed, that port is operating at around 5 million barrels per day of exports.

Now, will the Saudis or the UAE manage to get any more out, manage to de-bottleneck, improve operations at the ports? Yes, probably. I’d expect maybe they squeeze a little bit more out. But I don’t think we’re expecting huge new amounts out of either of those routes, and in fact, the Fujairah route has been attacked by the Iranians several times and damaged in places along the pipeline and the port. So if anything, that 1.7 maybe of capacity may be less in actual use, and that’s it really. Yeah, there are some routes through Iraq that maybe a few hundred thousand barrels per day, but not enough to really change the game. So anything else is going to take time.

Regarding any major de-bottlenecking, new routes – we’re talking two to three years, realistically, in a kind of emergency situation. Post-war, all these countries, the UAE, Saudi and some of the others that are completely stuck, like Kuwait, will try to develop alternative routes. They’ll probably do so quite urgently, but still, that’s a two or three year job.

(LF): Was it short-sighted that these routes haven’t been thought about and developed before? The Strait of Hormuz is so important.
Is this something that is maybe we’re going to catch up with really quickly?

(RM): The Saudi east-west line was built in the 80s and it was during the tanker war between Iran and Iraq at that point. There was a need at that point, and then it kind of lay idle for three decades. It was used a bit for domestic exports, but not really for domestic use, but not really for exports, and the UAE line is more recent. It was built in 2011. So you could say those were kind of far-sighted because nobody really expected the Strait to be closed. It was always out there as a worst case, but unlikely scenario, and people, I think, expected if the Strait was closed, then the US Navy would reopen it within a few weeks. They were thinking in the kind of scenario of the Iranians would attack with small boats. They would have mines. It would be a kind of conventional kind of closure, and it would take a few weeks of action to reopen it, and for a few weeks, the pipeline is not really justified. So I think it’s lucky indeed that they at least built the two that they did. But as we’ve seen, the scenario for closing the Strait now is different.

It relies on missiles, drones, and especially on the drone threat, which is very hard for the US to counter in any kind of conventional way. Now, would it have been better if those pipelines were built to carry more? Would it be better if they had connected up Kuwait and Qatar so those countries could export too? in retrospect, yes. But it just seems like it’s such an unlikely scenario that there was never the impetus to do more. I mean, the UAE actually was building a second pipeline starting in 2014. So it would carry more of its exports, and at some point that will come into action as well. But again, not really in time for this current conflict.

Q. (LF): Amit, back to the pipeline discussion, pivoting more to India. Do you think this is going to reinvigorate a discussion about whether India should be involved with some type of pipeline project to have more security with oil?

A. (AB): There are three serious proposals for pipelines from West Asia to India. All of these are for natural gas, because oil is better transported on ships. The first is the TAPI pipeline, which is the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, and the second project was Iran-Pakistan-India IPI. The thing is, both of these pipelines pass through Pakistan. They were talked up in the mid-2000s, but given the underlying risk of putting a critical infrastructure through Pakistan, these pipelines are really unlikely to ever come up. So I don’t think IPI or TAPI have any future. The third pipeline which was proposed was an Oman or Iran-Oman-to-India pipeline, which goes subsea, via the sea route.

So this is, again, the project has been proposed for a while. But given that gas does flow in the form of LNG quite freely, it is not as crucial as it used to be 20 or 30 years ago. If we go back to the early 2000s, LNG market was a very shallow market, very few operators. You had to get long-term contracts. So the pipelines made more sense at that time, and given that Iran is going to be the supplier for the gas, it’s unlikely that many contractors will want to work there. So we would have to continue relying on ships, really.

Q. (LF): How does Iran fit in in the future with global oil trade and rebuilding infrastructure in the region? What could this look like going forward? You mentioned that Iran may have a significant influence over the Strait of Hormuz, especially if the United States just abandons trying to find a way to open it back up and keep it safe and take authority away from Iran. Will the country sort of fold back into operating with other Gulf states? How do you see this taking shape, potentially?

A. (RM): Yeah, a lot of imponderables there. That depends on settlement and if there is indeed a settlement or just a kind of a stalemate and the shape of Iranian post-war government and so on. I think the sanctions regime on Iran, on Iranian oil is broken down. It will be very tough for the US to reinstate it. So that means that more countries, including India and others, potentially have access to Iranian oil, not just China. I think there will continue to be issues about how that’s paid for and countries will have to find routes that don’t depend on the US dollar. But, they can find such routes, alternative banking routes and barter trade and so on. But I think that the prohibition of Iranian oil going to other countries is going to break down if it hasn’t already. I think Iran, they want money to rebuild. Obviously, they’ll get that from their oil earnings and Iranian oil, of course, continues to flow at rates, at least of the rates pre-war, possibly even more, and, of course, at much higher prices. So a lot of money coming into Iran.

Now that will also be used on, of course, on sustaining their war efforts and building up the military and so on. But again, in a post-war scenario, there will be some effort to rebuild domestically as well. They’ll also be having money for these tolls, a significant amount. And they’ve talked about reparations and looking for investment into the country from the Gulf states. That’s going to be difficult. I don’t think anyone’s seriously going to pay them reparations. The demands go the other way as well. The Gulf is saying, no, you pay us reparations, and in terms of investment into the country.

Look, Iran was always a very difficult place to invest in, never mind sanctions. It was just a very difficult investment environment. Very opaque, a lot of vested interests, a lot of corruption, a lot of companies linked to Revolutionary Guards, which either you couldn’t deal with because of sanctions or that they were determined to protect their own turf and basically keep people out, whether in the energy sector or other sectors. So under anything like the current government, I don’t expect like a Russian investment into Iran. Of course, people will try. But I think practically even China found it was just a very tough place to invest seriously. You can speculate about very different governments that may be more open. Maybe that will come. But the current line is a pretty hard line. A Revolutionary Guard-dominated ideological regime, which is not going to be very open to international investment, and in that sense, it’s a pretty different outcome from the Venezuela case, which I think the U.S. was hoping to replicate.

(LF): Thank you all so much. We really hope to continue this conversation as this conflict continues, at least for another couple of weeks, and certainly it will be long term ramifications if it does indeed wind down, as President Trump suggested.

Robin Mills is the CEO of Qamar Energy, and non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, Washington D.C.

Amit Bhandari is the Senior Fellow for Energy, Investment and Connectivity at Gateway House.

Lara Farrar is the Council on Foreign Relations, International Affairs Fellow at Gateway House.

This podcast was exclusively recorded for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can explore more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in  

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

The post The future of Persian Gulf oil flows appeared first on Gateway House.

The first quarter of 2026 has brought strategic upheavals globally. These have not left the ASEAN countries unscathed. The ASEAN chair, the Philippines, is facing hard choices early in its chairmanship. Confronted by aggressive Chinese intent, the Philippines had sought to focus its chairmanship on an agenda for the region, particularly the South China Sea, and on economic integration and digital governance. Much of that has now been overwhelmed by the West Asia crisis, which has demanding consequences on ASEAN members’ (AMS) social and economic fabric.

Initially, ASEAN reacted quietly but moved fast, compared to what sceptics normally expect. A joint statement was made on 4 March 2026, seeking a reduction in hostilities and asking for restraint. The language was cautious by intent: the ASEAN Way always seeks consensus-building and unity to cover divergences among them.

This has become more difficult to maintain in recent times, but on the West Asia crisis, there was a semblance of unity, which papered over important variations in the position of the AMS. Each made their own strategic assessments and studied their domestic political necessities.

The Philippines now finds itself in a unique position. As a U.S. ally working closely to counter Chinese incursions, it is expected to abide by the narrative that the Trump administration emanates. Yet, as ASEAN chair, Manila chose a restrained view as a requirement of the time, without succumbing to criticism of being indecisive.

The Philippines has 2.2 million people employed in the Gulf countries. A widening war in the region threatens their wellbeing and remittances and creates economic challenges for the Philippines. This factor is perhaps the dominant reason for the position that Manila took and had ASEAN abide by. This delicate balancing of support to the United States as an ally and catering to the welfare of its citizens abroad is the hallmark of the Philippines’ positioning today.

Among other ASEAN countries, the reactions have been divergent. Indonesian and Malaysian positions manifest their domestic sentiments and their support for the Arab countries. President Prabowo of Indonesia indicated that he was ready to mediate, to buttress Indonesia’s position as a bridge builder when international conflicts take place. Indonesia had enthusiastically joined the Board of Peace led by the US but later baulked at paying $1 billion and was anxious that the benefits to Palestine may not accrue as envisaged. Indonesian participation has become more complicated after the Iran crisis.

Malaysia, however, has been more critical of the U.S.-Israeli strikes. Malaysian public opinion, which is consistently empathetic to the Muslim countries.

Singapore and Vietnam emphasise principles rather than the personalities involved and are concerned that the precedent of uncalled-for strikes and the resultant implications for the desecration of international law and order are more dangerous for small countries that rely more on international law than their own power.

Beyond the foreign policy challenges for ASEAN countries individually and collectively, the economic turmoil has been relentless. The obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz has roiled international energy markets; for the ASEAN countries, who are extraordinarily dependent on energy imports, the impact has been deeper. They are truly faced with the Hormuz dilemma.

A surge in oil prices, increasing costs of logistics and transport, and consequently, basic necessities have caused inflationary pressures, which were already a concern, and are now verging on a state of crisis. Once again, ASEAN finds itself in a vortex of economic problems, not of its own making.

The Philippines led the economic institutional response, shifting the emphasis from longer-term goals like digital economy and innovation towards prioritising economic well-being, especially. sustainable energy supplies… The ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement of 1986 has been revived after a long period of dormancy.^[1]  Its relevance now is greater as it encourages ASEAN member states that have energy resources, like Malaysia and Brunei, to support more import-dependent ASEAN members and recreate the regional interdependence that the petroleum security agreement originally envisaged.

Similarly, greater attention is now paid to ASEAN infrastructure, like the ASEAN power grid. This initiative has been long in discussion but slow in implementation. It now carries evident urgency. A new regional energy blueprint, the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC), was initiated for 2026-2030. If ASEAN countries can share power across their borders, it provides them avenues to shield against energy disruptions from fossil fuels. Hydropower, in the mainland-based ASEAN members, can use the grid to compensate for power shortages emanating from the energy disruption. It’s an incomplete resolution. But if implemented, it shows that ASEAN can act practically when facing critical choices, and this will help their unity.

Domestically, ASEAN has moved quickly, undertaking fuel subsidies and price controls and encouraging conservation efforts to reduce consumption as various short-term measures.

The safety of ASEAN nationals, millions of whom work across West Asia, is deeply worrisome. The safety of Philippines, Thai, Indonesian, and Malay citizens if the war escalates and civilians become the targets of Iranian retaliation will raise anxiety levels. ASEAN has activated inter-member state consular collaboration, where the members collate local resources in each country affected by the war and coordinate welfare and evacuation efforts as and when required.

The West Asian crisis has fostered introspection among ASEAN countries. It emphasises the manifest reality that is generally understood but not always dealt with effectively – that the ASEAN region is often subject to international and regional upheavals, over which it has no control and can neither prevent nor ameliorate. The challenge of connectivity and globalisation to which they are committed often brings home challenges that they are not fully prepared to deal with. This is not to emphasise the powerlessness of ASEAN but to understand the restraint on its influence beyond its members.

Like in the COVID and then Ukraine crises, ASEAN’s emphasis once again leans towards building resilience and understanding their limited ability to determine outcomes. This is a gentle manifestation of ASEAN unity, which is generally imperfect, but nevertheless an element that can be strengthened and must surely be preserved.

Gurjit Singh is a former Indian Ambassador to Germany and author of The Durian Flavour: India, ASEAN and the Act East Policy. He is currently promoting the impact investment movement for implementing SDGs in Africa.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited. 

References:

[1] ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA) Secretariat. https://aseanenergy.org/secretariat/asean-petroleum-security-agreement-apsa-secretariat

The post ASEAN challenged by the Iran crisis appeared first on Gateway House.

The world oil supply has fallen by 8%-10% because of the latest conflict in the Persian Gulf,^[i] and India has started buying oil from other sources to make up the shortfall. This has included larger purchases of crude from Russia,^[ii] Venezuela,^[iii] from which U.S. sanctions have temporarily been lifted, and other sources outside the Persian Gulf. India has substantial refining capacity and is able to quickly process the crude to produce fuels such as diesel, petrol, aviation, and LPG (household cooking gas). This has kept the economy afloat, and India will not run short on fuel.

Several countries do not have sufficient domestic refining capacity and import finished petroleum products. They are at greater risk of running short. This is the state of India’s neighbours – Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal – which are all importers of petroleum products and are facing acute shortages. Pakistan and Sri Lanka have already introduced a 4-day work week to save fuel, while Sri Lanka has additionally introduced rationing for petrol and diesel. Leaders of developed nations such as the U.K.^[iv] and Australia^[v] have also warned of fuel shortages, as they don’t have sufficient refining capacity locally.

India is the world’s third-largest importer of fuel—4 million barrels/day, which costs the exchequer over $100 billion annually. The financial constraints will increase as oil prices have run within the range of $65-$70 per barrel for the past year, giving India the ability to run its many social sector programmes. Now, however, oil prices are up by over 50% to $105–$110 per barrel. For India, the spike means an extra outflow of $5 billion/month. If the crisis and the accompanying high prices persist, India’s GDP growth is projected to slow down from 7.6% last year to 6.5% in 2026-27.^[vi]

India relies on imports to meet about 90% of its petroleum needs, and this is unlikely to change. Domestically there have been no major oil discoveries in the past two decades. In 2025, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri spoke of there being Guyana-sized reserves in the Andaman Sea.^[vii] There was no follow-up to the statement, and in the absence of evidence, this remains speculation at best. In March 2026, India’s upstream major, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), announced a tender, potentially worth $18-$20 billion, to hire ships internationally to explore for oil and gas in the Andaman deepwater basin. There is no guarantee ONGC will find commercial-sized hydrocarbon reserves that will make a dent in India’s massive oil imports. If a discovery is made (speculative), it will take up to a decade to reach the market. India’s dependence on imported oil, therefore, continues unchanged for the foreseeable future.

India must take seriously a plan for future shocks. Energy markets are prone to fluctuations and are impacted by geopolitical events. For instance, prices of natural gas have seen three major spikes since 2010. First, after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, after which Japan went off nuclear power and shifted to gas. Second, after the 2022 Ukraine crisis, when Europe stopped buying Russian gas and shifted to LNG. The third instance is now, after Qatar stopped LNG production due to attacks on its energy installations. The oil market too shows such fluctuations – the routine play of an ecosystem. There will be other such events in the future.

The pain point for India is price, and it needs to be addressed financially. Historically, India has invested in oil fields in Russia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mozambique and elsewhere. However, these acquisitions have been relatively small – approximately 15 million tonnes/year – about 6%-7% of India’s total oil consumption. Managing oil fields in another country is a complex undertaking, for which India has limited bandwidth. Even those acquisitions of new acreage slowed down sharply over the past decade, possibly due to the shift in government’s emphasis towards the green transition. The current crisis shows that green transitions have restricted potential and that oil is and will be the driver for the Indian economy.

India needs a fresh approach to cover the oil price risk – and the best way is to make equity investments in proven oil and gas fields in stable-resource economies overseas. The dividends and higher return from these investments during price spikes will partly offset the burden of costlier imports.

Some of these are in new energy sources, like shale oil, which has been the biggest shift in the petroleum sector over the past 25 years and has transformed the U.S. from a declining oil producer to the world’s largest. The U.S. now accounts for nearly 20% of the global oil production – almost as much oil as Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. India can benefit by investing in American oil companies purely as a financial investor, not the operator.

It’s not difficult. The U.S. has the world’s largest and most liquid financial markets, with hundreds of oil companies ranging from the very small to global super-majors such as Exxon and Chevron. For the companies themselves, a long-term investor like India, also energy-dependent, provides stability. Like the U.S., Canada and Australia have become important exporters of oil and natural gas, respectively. These are stable democracies with transparent regulatory environments – and are immune to the geopolitical upheaval common in the natural resource sector.

All three countries – the U.S., Canada, and Australia – have, since the early 2000s – put in place tighter rules for natural resource acquisitions by foreign governments. An Indian state-owned enterprise investing in resources is likely to trigger similar scrutiny. A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), which is a passive financial investor, will be a better vehicle for such investments. The SWFs of the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait have significant investments in all three countries, including sectors such as hydrocarbons and critical minerals. India, as a part of Pax Silica, the American initiative to create secure supply chains for critical minerals, should get similar treatment as the Gulf states.

For India to benefit, its attitude to such means of energy provision needs to change. Energy security comes not just from physically owning an oil field but also from a better-supplied oil market and having the funds to pay for the oil. India doesn’t have much choice: its economy will continue to run on oil for the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the rhetoric on green energy. The Modi government has been very lucky in one respect – oil prices have been moderate since 2014, creating fiscal space for the government. The events of the past few weeks show that this happy situation cannot be taken for granted – the government must act boldly to lock in these gains. Such investments will also give India an enhanced political presence in all the three countries.

[i] International Energy Agency. Oil Market Report: March 2026. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-march-2026

[ii] Bloomberg. “India Has Bought 60 Million Barrels of Russian Oil for April.” March 25, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-25/india-has-bought-60-million-barrels-of-russian-oil-for-april

[iii] Bloomberg. “India Has Bought 60 Million Barrels of Russian Oil for April.” March 25, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-25/india-has-bought-60-million-barrels-of-russian-oil-for-april

[iv] Prime Minister’s Office, United Kingdom. “PM Remarks, 1 April 2026.” https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-remarks-1-april-2026

[v] ABC News (Australia). “Anthony Albanese National Address on Fuel Crisis and Iran.” April 1, 2026. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-01/anthony-albanese-national-address-fuel-crisis-iran/106522770

[vi] The Economic Times. “ICRA Expects India’s GDP Growth to Moderate to 6.5% in FY27 amid West Asia Conflict.” https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/icra-expects-indias-gdp-growth-to-moderate-to-6-5-in-fy27-amid-west-asia-conflict/articleshow/129903705.cms?from=mdr

[vii] Press Information Bureau, Government of India. “Press Release.” https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2143550&reg=3&lang=2

Amit Bhandari is Senior Fellow for Energy, Investment and Connectivity.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

The post India’s options after the Persian Gulf war appeared first on Gateway House.

In the contemporary history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the university has served far more than an auxiliary role to the state. It has functioned as the central pillar of modern national identity and the primary engine for what bibliometricians call ‘knowledge impact’ (Attarzadeh & Seyfidi, 2022). Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Iranian academia had attained a global standing far better than that of most developing nations. The Iranian university system, once viewed as a strategic citadel—a means of projecting soft power while simultaneously securing the hard technical requirements of self-sufficiency—has changed drastically.

Did it falter?

For the last four decades, Iran has been navigating political upheavals, violence, and fractious currents of international isolation.  The local protests and then the conflict with the U.S. and Israel has seen a near-total internet blackout in January and again this month by the government in Tehran, casting doubts on whether Iranian universities can continue to operate. These disruptions are the most severe to hit the academic sector since the 1980 “cultural revolution,” which resulted in a three-year total closure of universities. Sustained digital disenfranchisement exerts immediate and systemic pressure on the schooling and higher education sectors. It affects each sector of the economy and each element of society; this essay focuses on higher education and scientific research.

What does a continued internet blackout do to the higher education system? It halts online teaching and cuts access to scholarly literature, data, and research software, freezing academic output. This digital isolation bars participation in peer review and international collaborations. Students and faculty are pushed out of the global academic community, unable to manage applications, fellowships, visas, or submit research to international journals and conferences (Erfani 2026).  From the 1996 peak in international collaboration to recent militarisation and conflicts, the university system has changed significantly.

Two main pressures shaped this: external ‘academic boycott’ due to sanctions, and internal ‘ideological purification’ by the state.

Iran faces an unprecedented existential crisis. Currently, the conflict has no end in sight. Military wars and armed aggression may have different impacts on the parties involved; the adverse effects on scientific advancement, scholarly engagement, and the sustenance of academia are irreversible. This weakens the bedrock that is meant to preserve human values and progress.

The ongoing crisis in and around Iran is not merely a matter of destroyed laboratories or vacant classrooms. It is the collapse of a legal and social contract that once positioned the university as the engine of national development. While geopolitical headlines focus on the kinetic aspects of regional warfare, a more profound destruction has occurred in the corridors of Iran’s universities and research institutions. The loss of key academic figures—through unceasing brain drain, as direct casualties, and through the intensifying “cleansing for political expediency” (Mosheim, 2026) marks the culmination of a slow and unfortunate decline.

The Pre-Sanction Era of Growth and Integration

Prior to the tightening of international sanctions in 2006 and the deep political fissures that followed the 2009 presidential election, Iranian higher education operated under a mandate of rapid expansion and modernisation. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the legal framework for education was defined by a five-year development plan, which sought to transition Iran into a knowledge-based economy. This growth was driven by a state-centric utilitarianism designed to modernise the workforce, yet it produced a significant socio-cultural tension. The state’s drive was often hyper-religious and mostly pharisaical. It was geared toward industrial needs, without accounting for shifting demographic realities.

STEM fields became the top national priority. Iran’s education spending was often higher than that of other countries in the region (Kokabisaghi et al. 2019). The government saw science as a source of international prestige beyond ideology. Universities acted as bridges for Iranian thinkers to connect with Western researchers. This was before politics became completely radicalised. The period pushed for ‘scientific meritocracy.’ Government departments had some technocratic freedom, and the university helped middle-class mobility. A favourable socio-legal climate enabled Iranian scholars to attend international conferences, fostering openness. Despite the Islamic Republic’s ideology, academics focused on rigour rather than politics (Habibi 2015; Beidollahkhani 2025). The early expansion of the Iranian university system was a paradox of state-driven utilitarianism and what seemed to be a genuine global ambition.

While the growth was engineered by the state to serve its own ends, the system enabled a level of international scientific exchange that, in retrospect, appears to be a lost era of integration. This period proved that Iranian intellectual talent was capable of global leadership when the doors of collaboration remained even partially ajar. The chart below has a non-exhaustive list of academic and research partnerships between universities in Iran and nations other than Russia and China. The current tragedy is not just the loss of funding, but the loss of that integrationist spirit. This foundation was severely tested as the geopolitical climate soured and international economic sanctions were imposed.

A Stanford University project called Stanford Iran 2040 Project provides a useful study (Azadi et al. 2020), employing a longitudinal analysis of Iran’s scientific trajectory and drawing on extensive datasets. In summary it reveals that Iran’s annual publication output increased from approximately 1,000 in 1997 to over 50,000 in 2018. Consequently, Iran’s proportional contribution to global scientific literature rose from 0.1% to 2.6% during this period. The disciplinary distribution of this output is characterised by a predominance in the fundamental sciences (41%), followed by medicine and health (22%), engineering (22%), agricultural and environmental sciences (10%), and social sciences (5%). The quality of output, however, presents a more complex picture. While the qualitative standing of these publications—as benchmarked by journal impact and rankings—demonstrates considerable disciplinary variance, engineering consistently performs best. Notably, this longitudinal data suggests that research quality has remained largely stable across most sectors. Nevertheless, a persistent discrepancy remains.

There are three contradictions and discrepancies: the restrictions on STEM research following sanctions, the brain drain from Iran, purges and institutional decline:

1. The STEM paradox of productivity vs quality

The performance of Iranian universities in the first decade of this century shows stark discordance. Science-metric providers noted that between 1996 and 2010, Iran’s scientific output rose 18-fold, from 736 to 13,238 published papers, and that it grew 11 times faster in Iran than the world average (MacKenzie, 2010; Coghlan, 2011). The paradox is that Iran produced more papers than ever before, yet the science behind them was increasingly ignored by the global community.  This discord is the direct result of the  crippling international sanctions (beginning in earnest in 2012 and re-imposed with enhanced pressure in 2018) imposed on Iran. It fundamentally altered productivity and criminalised knowledge transfer.

The Code of Federal Regulations under U.S. law treats research, teaching, or peer review with Iran as the export of services to a sanctioned country. The list includes Cuba, North Korea, and Syria.

The U.S. government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control approves academic collaboration with entities in sanctioned nations. The web of legal codes covers original research, meta-analyses, reviews, and case reports performed with designated entities.

Opinion pieces and translation services may be partially exempt under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but they still require OFAC review (Miller and Ziad-Miller, 2019). Breaking these rules carries a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail per violation under Title 31 C.F.R. 500-599. Because of these sanctions and statutory restrictions, Iranian researchers struggled to import vital equipment—spectrometers, reagents, and engineering software—from around the world, including the U.S.

According to UN estimates based on country-level data without extrapolation (UNESCO, 2021), Iran’s investment in R&D as a share of GDP in 2018 was 0.83, much higher than India (0.65), Indonesia (0.23), Egypt (0.72), Argentina (0.54), and Mexico (0.31). Moreover, the number of full-time researchers per million inhabitants in 2018 was significantly higher in Iran (1,475) than in India (253), Indonesia (216), Egypt (687), and Argentina (1,192), and was more than double the average for all Arab states combined. Currency collapse, scientific isolation, and psychological strain hindered every aspect of Iranian researchers’ work and crippled science in Iran (Butler, 2019). Many shifted to theoretical modelling and simulation in materials science and nanotechnology. This kept the propensity of churning out publications high, but may have separated scientific and academic research from practical reality and industrial use.

Iranian universities experienced a more rapid transformation in the aftermath of the 2009 domestic protests. Research grants and faculty appointments were increasingly scrutinised by security agencies. Suspicion stifled international collaboration as scholars feared contact with foreign peers would be seen as espionage. The university was no longer viewed as a space for inquiry but as a potential site of soft war against the state. This led to a series of renewed nationwide anti-government protests, followed by the killing of thousands of protestors and activists.

When a nation’s scientific and academic elite are siloed into only local conversations and domestic journals, the iterative process of peer correction stops. The lack of intellectual visibility means that Iranian innovations in medicine or engineering, new ideas in social sciences, and critical reflections rooted in the humanities remain unvetted and unintegrated (Tarikhi, 2020). This isolation does not just hurt academia; it poses a terminal threat to the state’s own goals of civilian self-sufficiency, as it severs links to global R&D cycles and international academia, which are necessary conditions for modern socio-economic progress.

2. The great exodus of brainpower

The most quantifiable tragedy of the last two decades is the flight of human capital, or brain drain. Iran consistently ranks among the top countries for the emigration of its highly educated elite (Azadi et al., 2020). According to the International Monetary Fund estimates (IMF 2024), the annual loss of human capital from Iran is equivalent to an economic loss of over $50 billion—nearly matching the nation’s peak oil revenues in some years.

This must not be viewed as a choice made by individuals, but as an inevitable reaction to the deterioration of the “transnational social space” (Cooke and Wood 2026). Several factors were at play – an excessive inflation rate, a severely devalued currency, a disconnect from the economic benefits of globalisation, and a large population starved of the socio-cultural benefits of liberalisation. More importantly, the institutionalised ideological purge led to severe restrictions on the academic environment and the dilution of institutional autonomy in the garb of purifying scientific thought and inquiry. The classification of students (a legal mechanism to ban politically active students from education) and the 2022 protests (‘Woman, Life, Freedom’) led to a massive crackdown on university campuses.

For a PhD scholar in Engineering, for instance, the choice became clear: stay in an economy with 40% inflation, governed by a hyperbole-infused political system with limited freedom of research, or emigrate to another country as soon as possible. This led to a profound sense of “psychosocial despair” among the educated Iranian thought leaders.

This exodus of talent has created a missing middle class in the Iranian economy. Iran awards several doctorates and trains many scientists every year. However, the lack of an internationally benchmarked legal framework to protect intellectual property and the dominance of quasi-state foundations over the private sector resulted in a fractured innovation ecosystem incapable of absorbing them. Iran’s investment in education effectively serves as a major subsidy to other nations where these scholars eventually settle, create new knowledge, publish their academic research, and file patents for foreign organisations.

3. Purges and institutional decline

The institutional decline of the Iranian university reached a tipping point during the 2021–2023 purge. This “Second Cultural Revolution” was framed as a strategy to “purify” universities in the wake of protests. In a punitive shake-up designed to eliminate dissent, the state expelled and, in some cases, imprisoned thousands of school principals and professors. These academicians were not merely removed; they were replaced by loyal propagandists.

The substitution of expertise for ideology has been described as “a coup by the security apparatus against science” (Stevenson 2024). This hollowing out of the faculty directly correlates with the plummeting qualitative rankings of Iranian institutions, as the replacement cohort lacks the international standing and research history of their predecessors.

Over the last 20 years, the performance of Iranian universities in global rankings has presented a deceptive picture. On the surface, institutions such as the University of Tehran and Sharif University maintained, or even improved, their positions through the mid-2010s. Quantitatively, these two Iranian universities ranked among the top 500 in the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings across parameters. However, a deeper analysis reveals a different story. While citation counts are high—sometimes bolstered by internal citation networks—scores for “International Outlook” and “Industry Income” have stagnated (THE, 2025). While Iran once outpaced regional rivals such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia in STEM fields, the last decade has seen a reversal. While top Saudi Arabian universities aggressively invested in global talent, Iranian labs have struggled with basic equipment, leading to a plateau in scientific breakthroughs.

To improve its standing in global university rankings, the government implemented a legal mandate requiring PhD students to publish in journals used by ranking agencies such as QS in their methodologies to graduate. This led to a culture of a “publication factory”, often marred by self-citation and, in some cases, the proliferation of predatory publishing to meet state-imposed quotas, leading to “modernity without development” (Sadeh et al. 2019). In the Times Higher Education rankings, Iranian universities consistently score in the bottom decile on the ‘International Outlook’ parameter. The lack of foreign faculty, the declining number of international collaborators and co-authors in scholarly work, and the isolation of domestic researchers—exacerbated by developments that began in 2025—have further damaged these institutions (Hashjin et al., 2025).

Repression mechanisms also led to the gradual demise of leading Iranian institutions. Reports of nationwide internet shutdowns and communications blackouts in early 2026, prior to the attack by the U.S. and Israeli forces, indicate a state strategy to conceal human rights violations and suppress the documentation of the crackdown on students and faculty (Amnesty International 2026; Associated Press 2026). These shutdowns represent a deliberate attempt to isolate Iranian academia from global oversight and commentary.

Innovation in Isolation

Despite the hollowing out of academic institutions, Iran maintained a high Innovation Efficiency Ratio, ranking 11th globally (Kokabisaghi et al. 2019). The most damning evidence of the decline in scientific temperament lies in the disconnect between scientific papers and industrial reality, such that Iran’s rank on international innovation indicators remains unnoticeable (Akhondzadeh, 2017). While scientific papers grew by nearly 500% between 2005 and 2018, Iranian filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or the European Patent Office – two of the largest patent offices in the world – remained negligible.

This is not surprising. According to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), most Iranian patents are utility models filed domestically, which lack the global novelty required for international competitiveness (WIPO 2025). Further, there is a near-total absence of knowledge spillover from the university to the manufacturing sector. The Iranian automotive industry, for instance, continues to rely on decades-old foreign platforms despite having thousands of domestic papers in advanced automotive engineering (Mazdeh et al., 2016). The focus of Iranian innovation, despite being limited in rigour and application, has shifted from civil advancement to military reconstitution (Spruk, 2026). Having suffered irreversible losses to military and civilian infrastructure during the 2024 Israeli campaign, the 12-Day War of June 2025, and the conflict with the U.S., which began early March 2026, Tehran has pivoted its remaining scientific talent in what can only be termed an existential fight for survival.

The Future of the Iranian Academia

The transformation of higher education and research in Iran over the last twenty years is a cautionary tale in cultural sociology and a warning in political economy. Iran has transitioned from a global colleague with high rates of international collaboration to an isolated, ideologically purged state that has pivoted its innovation engine toward survival. The outward migration of talented Iranians continues to pose a terminal threat to the nation’s long-term prosperity.

Protection for free exchange of ideas without any censorship or repression, and irrespective of creed, is the raison d’être for a modern egalitarian society. It is the necessary condition for shared prosperity. The sufficient condition, though, is the preservation of scientific temperament, which is the common but differentiated responsibility of all citizens and the state. But when a state tries to replace its professors with propagandists, students with sycophants, scholarship with sanctimonious rhetoric, intellectuals with influencers, it begins a painful journey towards imminent stagnation. History is replete with instances when men in power placed primacy on narcissistic rage for absolute dominance over building trust-based social cohesion. Everything else becomes secondary – the precision of the most advanced missiles, rich civilisational history, and even the capitalist might of the economy.

It was, after all, a philosopher and not a historian who said that “we learn from history that we do not learn from history” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel). Surely a vital lesson for Iran, but several nation-states and their leaders will do well to recognise this, for their own societies and humanity.

Ashish Bharadwaj is the Distinguished Fellow for Law and Education, Gateway House.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

Endnotes:

*Note: This is a non-exhaustive list based on an online search. Several webpages were either blocked or had broken links. The fields of cooperation are indicative and may not include all the areas of cooperation. Some signed MoUs are currently active, while others may have lapsed. Partnerships/collaborations vary in scope (student mobility, summer schools, joint research) and in who the host institution is for visiting students & scholars. Depending on available information, the year could indicate the year of commencement, the year of termination, or the year the MoU was signed.

1. Amnesty International. 2026. What happened at the protests in Iran?. Online News Article.
2. Associated Press. 2026. Iran supreme leader signals upcoming crackdown on protesters ‘ruining their own streets’ for Trump. Online Article.
3. Attarzadeh, B., & Seyfodini, H.S. 2022. National identity, transnational ideology, and cultural policy in Iran. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 29, 807 – 827.
4. Azadi, P., Mirramezani, M., Mesgaran, M. Migration and Brain Drain from Iran, Working Paper 9, Stanford Iran 2040 Project, Stanford University, April 2020.
5. Akhondzadeh, S. 2017. Innovation and Technology in Iran. Avicenna Journal of Medical Biotechnology 9(3), pp. 113-114.
6. Beidollahkhani, A. 2025. Policy-Mediated Epistemic Control: How Authoritarian Regimes Repurpose Graduate Political Science Research Agenda–The Case of Islamic Republic of Iran. Higher Education Policy
7. Butler, D. 2019. How US sanctions are crippling science in Iran, Nature, 13-14: September
8. Coghlan A. 2011. Iran is top of the world in science growth. New Scientist (Science in Society)
9. Cooke, F. L. and Wood, G. 2026. “International Sanctions, Transnational Social Space Dynamics, and Human Resource Implications for Multinational Enterprises”, in Reinterpreting Multinational Enterprises through a Revitalized Transnational Social Space Perspective, Eds. Mike Geppert, Ödül Bozkurt, Christoph Dörrenbächer, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 101
10. Erfani, E. 2026. “Internet Blackout: Iran’s Academic Shutdown.” Nature, Volume 650: 516
11. Habibi, N. 2015. “Iran’s overeducation crisis”, Middle East Brief 85(89), Brandeis University
12. Hashjin, A. A., Shabani, E., Tahmasebi, A., Farrokhi, P. & Akgün, H. S. 2025. International accreditation in Iranian universities of medical sciences: a qualitative analysis of challenges and solutions. BMC Medical Education 25:1447.
13. 2024. Staff Report for the 2024 Article IV Consultation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C.
14. Kokabisaghi, F., Miller, A.C., B.R. Farshid, Mahmood, A.S., Zarchi, A.K., et al. 2019. “Impact of United States political sanctions on international collaborations and research in Iran.” BMJ Global Health Vol 4, No. 5.
15. MacKenzie D. 2010. Iran showing fastest scientific growth of any country. New Scientist (Science in Society).
16. Mazdeh, M. M., Jafari, M., Akhavan, P. & Mousavi, S. J. 2016. Improving Product Development Performance Through Knowledge Outsourcing: A Study of the Iranian Automotive Industry. The South African Journal of Industrial Engineering 27(2), pp. 1-12.
17. Miller, A. C. and Ziad-Miller, A. 2019. “United States Federal Government Regulation of International Research Collaborations: What Every Physician-Scientist Should Know.” International Journal of Critical Illness and Injury Science, Vol 9, No. 1: 5.
18. Mosheim, T. 2026. Iran’s universities battered but not beyond repair. Times Higher Education.
19. Sadeh, S., Mirramezani, M. B. Mesgaran, A. Feizpour, P. Azadi. The Scientific Output of Iran: Quantity, Quality, and Corruption, Working Paper 7, Stanford Iran 2040 Project, Stanford University, February.
20. Spruk, R. 2026. Confrontation with the West and Long-Run Economic and Institutional Outcomes: Evidence from Iran. Preprint: arXiv and Cornell Tech
21. Stevenson, Struan. 2024. “Punitive Purge of Teachers and University Professors in Iran.” Former Scottish Representative to the European Parliament, Personal Blog
22. Times Higher Education. 2025. World University Rankings 2025: Iran Analysis
23. Times Higher Education. 2026. Arab University Rankings 2026
24. 2021. Science Report: The Race Against Time for Smarter Development. Paris
25. World Intellectual Property Organization. 2025. Global Innovation Index 2025: Iran. Geneva

The post The siege of Iranian higher education appeared first on Gateway House.

As the war between Iran, Israel and the U.S. rages on, an important visit that preceded the start of the conflict has been overshadowed. It was the state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel on February 25-26, 2026. In the holy city of Jerusalem, home to the world’s three major religions, a new script of win-win partnership between India and Israel, the two like-minded democracies and strategic partners, was written on February 26, opening new gateways for closer collaboration in areas of defence, critical technologies and cyber security.

Unfortunately, and tragically, two days later, the U.S.-Israel joint strike on Iran hijacked the headlines and global attention, and the newly minted Delhi-Jerusalem script was written, opening new gateways for closer collaboration in areas of defence, critical technologies and cybersecurity. Some sections of the public in India mostly focused on the timing of the visit, reinforcing the impression that India has tilted towards the U.S.-Israel camp.

These debates will go on endlessly – about the timing of the visit and whether Israel shared intelligence with India during the imminent war. In the world of realpolitik, the country’s core national interests come first, and seen thus, advancing security and strategic partnership with Israel has its own logic and rationale. So it is important to take an objective review of PM Modi’s visit to Jerusalem and its implications for India’s security and the overarching goal of Viksit Bharat. The talks between Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu upgraded India-Israel ties to the level of “Special Strategic Partnership”, a category reserved for very few countries, viz., the U.S., Russia, France and South Korea.

There are five major takeaways.

First, the visit was a compelling demonstration of India’s strategic autonomy and not an erosion of neutrality, as made out by some critics. PM Modi visited Israel with the full knowledge that it would be negatively viewed by left-liberal ideologues back home, who see any attempt at forging closer relations with Israel as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. India has not abandoned the Palestinian cause; for a reality check, India hosted the Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin^[1] in New Delhi on January 30, 2026, and hosted the India-Arab Ministers’ Forum^[2] on January 31, 2026, just days before Modi visited Israel.

Secondly, it was payback time for New Delhi. Israel was the only country that did not mince words and supported India’s right of self-defence during “Operation Sindoor.” Israel-supplied weapons helped India counter Pakistan’s offence. Many countries India considered close strategic partners preferred to remain ambivalent and played their own games. Against this backdrop, India’s core agenda with Israel during Modi’s visit was to bolster the defence and security partnership with Israel, the bedrock of bilateral ties. The outcomes were substantive and transformational. The two sides decided to accelerate joint development, joint production, and transfer of technology, with the overarching goal of bolstering Aatmanirbhar Bharat, India’s ongoing quest for self-reliance in indigenous defence technology.

Thirdly, as the fellow sufferers of terrorism, the two leaders took a strong stand against it. In a compelling address to the Knesset on February 25, PM Modi reaffirmed India’s solidarity with Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israelis over two years ago, saying, “With a heavy heart, we share your grief.”^[3] “India stands with Israel – firmly, with full conviction – in this moment and beyond.” A day later, with Netanyahu at his side, PM Modi told journalists at a joint press conference: Israel and India agree there is “no place for terrorism in the world, in any form.” These statements are important for a critical reason: as Pakistan continues with its persiflage and double-talk on cross-border terror, India can count on Israel as its steadfast partner against the neighbouring country’s efforts to derail India’s growth story.

Fourth, the talks positioned technology as the key driver of this new elevated phase in the India-Israel partnership. The two sides unveiled a Critical and Emerging Technologies Partnership, which will impart fresh momentum to cooperation in emerging frontiers such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and critical minerals.

Fifth, the focus on a deeper economic and development partnership. A clutch of pacts, covering diverse sectors including agricultural innovation and technologies, the use of civilian drones, satellite data, irrigation and fertilisation management and the transfer of knowledge in advanced agricultural technologies, was signed. This builds on the India-Israel Bilateral Investment Agreement signed in September 2025 and will accelerate negotiations for a Free Trade Area agreement.

Tel Aviv is now in the category of New Delhi’s top trusted partners which includes the U.S., Russia and the European Union. In terms of optics and concrete outcomes, Modi’s visit succeeded in changing the narrative of the India-Israel partnership and bringing to a decisive end the equivocation on the part of New Delhi to embrace Israel as a key partner in “Viksit Bharat” and “Surakshit Bharat.”

The commencement of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war means that India will have to deftly practise and demonstrate its strategic autonomy by managing heterogeneous and often contrapuntal relationships and strike a balance in its ties with the U.S. and Israel on the one hand and Iran and the Arab world on the other hand. India has centuries-old civilisational ties with Iran, but it has also ancient ties with Israel. The Book of Esther refers to India as ‘Hodu’, and the Talmud records trade with India in ancient times, as PM Modi reminded the Israeli parliament. In this multiplex and fracturing world, this is no time for binaries or zero-sum games. India needs all countries, big and small, to help fructify its vision of a humane, compassionate and balanced world order.^[4]

Manish Chand is CEO, Centre for Global India Insights, New Delhi

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

Support our work here.

© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

[1] News on Air. “EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar Meets with Foreign Affairs Minister of Palestine Varsen Aghabekian Shahin in New Delhi.” https://www.newsonair.gov.in/eam-dr-s-jaishankar-meets-with-foreign-affairs-minister-of-palestine-varsen-aghabekian-shahin-in-new-delhi/

[2] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. “2nd India–Arab Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.” https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl%2F40622%2F2nd_IndiaArab_Foreign_Ministers_Meeting

[3] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. “Prime Minister’s Address to the Knesset, February 25, 2026.” https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/40821/Prime_Ministers_Address_to_the_Knesset_February_25_2026

[4] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. “Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s Opening Remarks at the Inaugural Leaders’ Session of the Voice of Global South Summit 2023.”  https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/36109/Prime_Minister_Shri_Narendra_Modis_Opening_Remarks_at_the_Inaugural_Leaders_Session_of_Voice_of_Global_South_Summit_2023 

The post Modi’s Israel visit brings defence and tech appeared first on Gateway House.

With Iran in the news, the Parsi community in India is finding that their peripheral connection to the country evokes interest. Iran is the land of their very distant ancestry. Parsis are the followers of the prophet Zarathustra, who preached the ancient Persian faith, considered the world’s oldest monotheistic religion. It exercised a profound influence on later religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam on issues such as heaven, hell and the Day of Judgement.

Parsis see themselves as inheritors of the glorious traditions of two great Persian empires, the Achaemenid (550-330 BCE) and the Sassanid (224-651 CE). The ruins of Persepolis, standing majestically atop a hill, an architectural marvel of the ancient world, are a reminder of the legacy of the mighty Persian empire founded by Cyrus the Great was fortified by Darius the First. A replica of the `Cylinder of Cyrus’ from 539 BC is preserved in the United Nations building in New York and is acknowledged as the world’s first bill of human rights. The Old Testament refers to Cyrus, King of Persia, who conquered Babylon and set free the Jews who had lived in captivity for 70 years, allowing them to return to Jerusalem. The Book of Ezra refers to Cyrus as “Anointed of “The Lord”, a term normally reserved for Jewish prophets. 

The Parsis fled Persia for India about a century after the Sassanid empire collapsed and Persia came under Arab control following the Battle of Nahavand in 642 CE. India and Persia were two ancient civilisations with a deep connection and similar roots. Their early dialects, Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan, are sister languages with many common words, sometimes with opposite meanings. Their religions have several common concepts, including the deification of fire. The commonalities between the two countries continue. The most obvious is an extensive vocabulary of familiar words: khush, jabardast, hafta, sal, pyar mohbat, muskeelian, meherbani, tehzeeb, etc.

Persian was the official language for the Indian courts, administration and literature under the Mughal emperors and even early British rule. The fabled mosques and palaces of Persia, with their brilliant colours and delicate workmanship, was the inspiration for India’s Mughal monuments. Great Persian poets like Firdosi, Omar Khayam, Hafez, Rumi and Sa’di had a huge impact on Indian literature. Despite their theocratic state, the Iranians have remained proud of their pre-Islamic heritage, whether it is Persepolis or the Tomb of Cyrus. The winged Farohar, symbol of the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda, can be seen on some Islamic houses and across tourist shops in the country. 

Anjuman Atash Bahram, Mumbai, with the winged Farohar symbol at the top.                             Image credits: Heritage India

Iranians constantly emphasised that they were Persian Aryans as opposed to being of Arabic origins like most of West Asia. Many Iranians steadfastly continue to celebrate the ancient spring festival of Navroze with flowers and fruit decorations despite the disapproval of hardline Muslim clerics.

The Persian civilisational journey is a contrast with that of Pakistan, which inherited the famous cradle of civilisation, Mohenjo Daro, in Sindh. Few Pakistanis visit this glorious site; the locals feel little ancestral connection to the site, preferring to trace their roots to West Asia and not to Mohenjo Daro, despite being of sub-continental ethnicity.

Persia and India’s impact on each other go back to antiquity. But the extent of the Persian influence on the Parsi identity is more difficult to quantify. Till the 19th century, and even today for formal occasions, the Parsis have elements of Persian style in their dress code, including covering their heads. Men still wear long, stiff, lacquered black pagris or black prayer caps to the fire temple. Parsi women took to the sari early, but Persian elegance with bold colours and refined design is seen in their Chinese-style embroidered gharas. Their success in cultivating fruit orchards, usually chikoos or mangoes. is often attributed to their Persian heritage.

Wedding photograph of a Parsi couple in traditional attire from the 1900’s. Image credits: Chitravali

Rock icon Freddie Mercury, though a Parsi who consciously tried to hide his identity, in an unguarded moment admitted that his flamboyant persona was because he was a “Persian Popinjay”. 

Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury (centre), with his father, Bomi, and mother, Jer Bulsara, who were a part of the Parsi community from Bulsar (present-day Valsad), Gujarat. Image credits: Mid-Day

Persian influence is also glimpsed in Parsi food, where fruit and nuts are common embellishments in savoury dishes. The later Zoroastrian immigrants, the Iranis, who arrived in India in the 19th and 20th centuries looking for better opportunities, set up several bakeries and cafes in Mumbai in the style of those back in Iran. Most familiar Parsi names, such as Meher, Feroze, Hormaz, Darius, Jamshed, Dinshaw, Rustom, Sorab, Niloufer, Roxana et al., continue to be popular not just in Iran but all over West Asia. The names are from Avestan times and appear in Zoroastrian folklore and history.

Yazdani Bakery, 73 years old, is one of Mumbai’s iconic Iranian bakeries. Much loved by locals, it has been cherished through paintings and artworks, as seen on the left.

Despite this deep cultural connect, however, Parsis do not identify with Iran as the mother country. They left for India in the eighth century after more than a 100 years of religious persecution following the Arab invasion of Persia and assimilated completely with India, even while rigidly maintaining their own identity and religion. The local people named the new arrivals Parsis since they came from the Pars region in Iran. Zoroastrians who left Iran, however, retained ties with their co-religionists back home over the centuries through messages known as Rivayats. But while initially it was the Indian side which deferred to the spiritual advice from their fellow believers in Iran, gradually the tables turned as the Parsis became more prosperous and influential and the Iranian Zoroastrians more marginalised. 

For instance, when the Iranian Zoroastrians pointed out the inaccuracies in the Parsi calendar, with spring falling in August, many Parsi scholars declined to own their mistake in calculation. While back in Iran and much of Central Asia, modern-day Navroze and spring are ushered in on the basis of the vernal equinox and not calendars. Orthodox Parsis stick dogmatically to their own calendar. They did eventually reach a compromise – but only to dub the new equinox festival as Jamshedji Navroz.

In the mid-nineteenth century, prominent Parsis, enlisting the help of the British government, sought to alleviate the lot of their Zoroastrian brethren in Iran by getting the jizya tax – levied for centuries by the Muslim rulers on all non-Muslim communities such as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians was abolished by 1882, encouraging them to settle in India with their assistance.

The 20th century’s self-anointed Iranian monarchs, Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammed Reza Shah II, impressed with the achievements of the progressive Parsis in India, attempted to persuade them to return to Iran. Though Parsis often referred approvingly to II as “apro Shah” (Our Shah) since his family has assumed the title Pahlavi from pre-Islamic Persia and he celebrated the 2,500-year anniversary of Cyrus’s dynasty with jaw-dropping extravagance, he could not be enticed to leave India. The Shah, by playing up Persia’s ancient glory, only further alienated the Muslim theocracy and may have contributed to the Islamic revolution.^[1]

In 19th-century British Raj India, Christian missionaries who converted a Parsi boy taunted the Parsis, suggesting that they recited their prayers by rote without understanding them. This motivated the Parsis to take renewed interest in learning the dead languages of Persia, in which their scriptures are written. The generations of Parsi boys were made to study the language of their liturgical texts in Avestan, the extinct Persian language dating back to 1500 BCE.

It has similarities to Vedic Sanskrit and Pahlavi spoken from the 3rd to the 7th century CE. Today, Zoroastrianism and the early Persian language are taught in a few educational institutions in India, such as the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute in Mumbai and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, and some centres in the West, such as SOAS in London, are funded by Parsi trusts. But in present-day Iran, there seems to be little interest in learning this ancient language.

Coomi Kapoor is the author of The Tatas, Freddie Mercury and Other Bawas: An Intimate History of the Parsis.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

References:

[1] Avesta.org. “The Persian Rivayats.” Edited by Ervad Bamanji Nusserwanji Dhabhar.
https://www.avesta.org/rivayats/rivayats.htm

The post The Persian-Parsi identity appeared first on Gateway House.