Contribution in India and a Changing Global Order: Foreign Policy in the Trump 2.0 Era by Milan Vaishnav, ed., Sameer Lalwani, Tanvi Madan, Nivedita Kapoor, Garima Mohan, Nicolas Blarel, Shoumitro Chatterjee, Konark Bhandari, Rohan Mukherjee. Published March 25, 2026. By Carnegie: Endowment for International Peace.
Introduction
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in early 2025, the Middle East—or West Asia, as Indian decisionmakers generally call the region—has once again become a theater of sharp tensions. Sanctions on Iran have tightened, and the region has slid gradually toward open confrontation, culminating most recently in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. In this increasingly polarized environment, India’s long-practiced strategy of engaging all sides has come under strain. Yet Trump 2.0 has not fundamentally altered India’s strategy in the Middle East; rather, it has intensified pressures on a balancing approach that long predates the current administration.
For over a decade, New Delhi has carefully built relationships across regional rivalries in the Middle East. It has deepened defense cooperation with Israel, expanded energy and investment ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), maintained pragmatic engagement with Iran, and sustained its longstanding political support for the Palestinian cause. This calibrated balancing strategy—sometimes described as “strategic autonomy” or “multi-alignment”—has allowed India to avoid choosing sides while maximizing economic and security gains.
This balancing approach has been driven by a series of structural factors. Close to nine million Indian citizens live and work in the Gulf. The region also supplies a significant share of India’s energy imports. Roughly 50 percent of India’s crude oil imports and 54 percent of its natural gas shipments transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia and the UAE are major investors in India’s infrastructure and technology sectors. Israel has become a critical defense partner, supplying advanced military technology ranging from air defense systems to drones and electronic warfare capabilities. India has also been closely monitoring Chinese investments in infrastructure projects in the Middle East.
Until recently, Iran had also held strategic importance for India. The Chabahar Port project, located in southern Iran, has provided India with access to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. Iran has also served as an alternate energy source, although imports have declined sharply due to U.S. and international sanctions. For decades, New Delhi has tried to insulate this relationship from the turbulence of U.S.–Iran tensions.
For the past two decades, U.S. policies in the Middle East largely supported India’s balancing act. India has benefited from the United States’ security presence in the region, as well as U.S. efforts to normalize ties across the region, including initiatives such as the Abraham Accords. The emergence of new minilateral partnerships, such as I2U2 (a group consisting of India, Israel, UAE, and the United States) and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was meant to consolidate preexisting economic and connectivity partnerships, while indirectly countering China’s economic influence. India was able to seize upon these initiatives to diversify its engagement with the region and to develop trilateral partnerships in technology and infrastructure projects, further enhancing its economic presence.
Trump 2.0 and the Strains on India’s Balancing Strategy
Trump’s first term had already been marked by “maximum pressure” on Iran, including secondary sanctions targeting countries that continued economic engagement. His second term has revived and intensified that approach. Sanctions enforcement has tightened, further limiting India’s dealings with Tehran. However, India has neither severed ties nor adopted Washington’s maximalist rhetoric.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel on February 25, three days before the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, has complicated this balancing act. These developments did not signal a strategic realignment so much as they illustrated how quickly India’s regional diplomacy can be overtaken by great power confrontation. Modi’s trip to Tel Aviv underscored India’s deepening strategic partnership with Israel. It also took place at a moment when Israel faced growing diplomatic isolation in parts of the Global South and when regional tensions with Iran were visibly rising. In hindsight, the timing appeared even more consequential. While India was not directly involved, its high-profile engagement with Israel and its initial silence regarding the bombing of Iran has inevitably attracted attention and criticism.
It would be premature to interpret the visit as a wholesale realignment. India’s ties with Israel have been strengthening for years. Defense cooperation has intensified, particularly after India’s brief but intense eighty-eight-hour military confrontation with Pakistan in May 2025, which reinforced the value of drone warfare and air defense systems. Reports of additional procurement or co-development agreements during the visit are consistent with past purchases and cooperation, including under previous Indian National Congress Party governments.
India is unlikely to abandon its core doctrine of strategic autonomy. It has consistently resisted rigid alignments and avoided adopting other countries’ regional rivalries as its own. Even now, New Delhi has not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, despite Israeli requests to do so, thereby preserving diplomatic maneuverability. Nor has it publicly endorsed the full spectrum of Israeli security positions when it comes to Iran and the region.
The Limits of Strategic Autonomy
Trump 2.0 certainly presents a sterner test than previous U.S. administrations. The coming months will determine how sustainable this balancing act remains. If the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict deepens into a prolonged war, pressure on India to clarify its stance will intensify. The Trump administration’s emphasis on alignment, sanctions enforcement, and visible loyalty reduces the comfort zone for India’s more cautious approach.
Complicating India’s calculations is Pakistan’s apparent adaptation to the transactional logic of Trump’s second term. Islamabad has moved quickly to align itself with Washington’s priorities in the region. It has strengthened its security cooperation with Saudi Arabia, publicly supported Trump’s Gaza initiative, offered to contribute peacekeeping troops, and joined the Board of Peace. These moves position Pakistan as a flexible partner willing to deliver political and security support in exchange for strategic dividends.
For India, this is a reminder that regional diplomacy does not occur in isolation. If Pakistan or China succeed in presenting themselves as more responsive partners to either Washington or the Gulf states, India could face competitive pressure after a decade of successful diplomatic outreach to Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.
India does not have the luxury of disengagement from the Middle East given its large diaspora communities and its economic, energy, and security interests. The ongoing escalation between Israel, the United States, and Iran threatens shipping lanes, energy supplies, and regional stability—all core Indian interests. If confrontation deepens, the space for neutrality may further shrink. Whether New Delhi can preserve its balanced approach in an era of renewed great power confrontation will shape not only its Middle East footprint, but also the credibility of its broader claim to strategic autonomy in a fragmented world. Trump 2.0 has therefore tested the resilience of India’s Middle East strategy without fundamentally overturning it.
