Shashi Tharoor urges India to call for end to US-Israel–Iran conflict, seeks condolences for Khamenei
Shashi Tharoor urged India to call for an end to the US-Israel–Iran conflict, while backing a cautious approach. He also said New Delhi should have offered public condolences on Ayatollah Khamenei’s death amid rising geopolitical tensions.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said he understands the Indian government’s desire to take a cautious stand on the conflict between US-Israel and Iran, and hoped that it could make a public call to both sides to end the war quickly.
In an interview with PTI, the former minister of state for external affairs also stated that the government should have immediately offered public condolences to Iran over the death of its former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and acted on similar lines as it had done in the aftermath of the demise of then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Tharoor asserted that in the current circumstances, a good group of countries not party to the conflict on either side could go to both sides and ask them to call off the conflict, and India should be at the forefront of this.
Asked about assertions from various quarters that India should have condemned the assassination of Khamenei in a US-Israel strike, Tharoor said, “I don’t know about condemning it, but we should certainly have condoled it. After all (he was) the spiritual leader of a country with which he have friendly relations. It would have been appropriate, the day it happened, for us to express public condolences and share the grief of his loved ones and of his nation just as two years ago when president Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, we immediately issued a condolence as well as announced national mourning.” Tharoor noted that the moment the Iranian embassy opened the condolence book, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri went and signed the book, which was a “good thing”, he said.
“But I guess we could have been a bit more… it is simply the courteous thing to do for any country. For example, the president of some faraway country, with which we do not even have such a close relation, were to be such a victim, it would be odd for us not to offer condolences,” Tharoor said.
“But apart from that, I think I understand the government’s desire to take, for the lack of a better word, a cautious stand,” he said.
Tharoor said India has enormous stakes in what is going on and its energy security is dependent on the situation in the Gulf, including its LPG and LNG imports.
“We have 9 million of our citizens living there, which are an important source of remittances, and their safety and well-being is naturally a priority, there are investments coming to us from countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and we have very important overall trade relations as well as political interest and security cooperation, all of that.
“You don’t want to see that jeopardised. So for us, peace and stability in the Middle East-West Asia is extremely important,” the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.
On top of that, he said, the conflict has already affected people in India.
“There are dhabas closing down because of shortages of gas cylinders, there are situations where my friends in Hyderabad are saying no one can cook ‘haleem’ anymore because it is slow-cooking dish, there are challenges now in the coming election campaigns, where are we going to stop for chai when ‘chaiwalas’ don’t have LPG cylinders? I am not joking, these are genuine concerns affecting the Indian kitchen and the average Indian household,” Tharoor said.
At the moment, there is no panic at the petrol pumps, but if this war carries on for another four-six weeks, “we don’t know how much further the consequences could reach in our daily lives”, Tharoor said, noting that India wants the conflict to end.
“I would really hope that the Indian government could stand up and make a public call to both sides to end this war quickly. I still feel that sooner or later they are both (US-Israel and Iran) going to want a ladder to climb down the perches they are on.
“(US President) Mr (Donald) Trump has already said he is running out of targets to hit. The Iranians are clearly losing one layer after another of their government,” he said.
In these circumstances, surely if a good group of countries, who are not party to the conflict on either side of it, could go to both sides and say, “for the sake of this world, please call this off”, India should be at the forefront of it, Tharoor asserted.
The Congress has attacked the Modi government for its “silence” on the assassination of Khamenei and said “a compromised prime minister no doubt wants to avoid antagonising his American and Israeli friend”.
The opposition party had condemned the assassination. It had said India rightly condemned Iran’s attacks on Gulf states but was “completely quiet” on the US-Israeli assault on Iran in the first place.
Earlier this month, the Congress had staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha and protested in the Lok Sabha to express its dissatisfaction with the statement of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the West Asia situation in both Houses of Parliament.
The party had termed Jaishankar’s statement “vapid” and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy “(mis)adventurism”, coupled with the government’s “undermining” of the Indian Foreign Service, is pushing India into “vassalage”.
The US and Israel launched a major military attack on Iran on February 28, killing Khamenei.
Making a suo motu statement in Parliament, Jaishankar had said New Delhi stood for maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states in the region. He defended allowing the Iranian ship to dock at an Indian port as the right decision taken on humanitarian grounds.
