Sonia Gandhi slams Modi govt for betraying Iran, surrendering to Israel

NEW DELHI: Senior Indian Congress leader and former party president Sonia Gandhi has lambasted the Narendra Modi-led Indian government for what she described as a complete surrender of India’s foreign policy, prioritizing subservience to Israel while betraying long-standing strategic ties with Iran.

In an opinion piece published in an Indian daily, Sonia Gandhi condemned New Delhi’s “disturbing silence” and “muted responses” following the recent targeted assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in joint US-Israeli strikes.

She termed this reticence not as neutrality but as “abdication” and a “grave betrayal” of India’s traditional balanced approach in West Asia, signaling a cowardly retreat from principled diplomacy.

Gandhi highlighted that India’s historical foreign policy has carefully maintained parity between Israel and Iran, rooted in civilizational links and mutual strategic interests with Tehran.

She pointed out that Iran facilitated India in key projects like the Chabahar Port and Zahedan connectivity, which have bolstered regional access.

“By making high-profile visits to Israel without a balancing engagement with Iran, and now remaining conspicuously silent on the assassination of a sitting head of state, the Modi government has shredded decades of cautious parity,” Gandhi wrote.

She argued that this one-sided alignment exposes India as prioritizing political optics, defense deals with Israel, and alignment with pro-Western powers over national interest and moral clarity.

The Congress leader further noted that New Delhi’s initial response focused solely on condemning Iran’s retaliatory actions while ignoring the preceding unprovoked attacks, raising serious questions about India’s credibility on the global stage.

“When the targeted killing of a foreign leader draws no clear defence of sovereignty or international law from our country and impartiality is abandoned, it raises serious doubts about the direction and credibility of our foreign policy,” Ms. Gandhi said in her article.

She described the current posture as “moral cowardice,” leaving India isolated among Global South nations and BRICS partners like Russia and China, who have adopted more measured stances emphasizing sovereignty and de-escalation.

Ms Gandhi further asked as to why should countries in the Global South trust India to defend their territorial integrity tomorrow if it appears hesitant to defend that principle today.

The former Congress president also demanded that when Parliament reconvenes for the second part of the Budget session, the government’s “disturbing silence” over the breakdown of international order must be debated openly and without evasion.