Akhilesh Pillalamarri
Last week, the ongoing war in the Middle East escalated with the death of Hezbollah’s erstwhile leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a bunker in Lebanon following an Israeli airstrike on September 27. Since then, Israeli planes and missiles have pounded Lebanon, decimating Hezbollah, in addition to causing civilian deaths. Subsequently, Iran, which is closely allied with Hezbollah, fired around 180 missiles at Israel on October 1.
India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has grown much closer to Israel, driven by strategic, economic, and ideological concerns. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) that could be interpreted as tacit support for Israel, Modi wrote on September 30 that he “spoke to [Israeli] Prime Minister [Netanyahu] about recent developments in West Asia. Terrorism has no place in our world. It is crucial to prevent regional escalation and ensure the safe release of all hostages.”
India has traditionally done a good job of cultivating good relations with sets of countries that are hostile to each other, such as the United States and Russia, and, in the Middle East, with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. As the minister of external affairs, Dr. S. Jaishankar, has said, India’s foreign policy is “multi-vector,” and characterized by dealing with countries that may be rivals with each other on a “non-exclusive” basis.
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