It is not surprising that a section of the Indian commentariat was rattled when Pakistan hosted what may prove to be the most consequential direct dialogue between the United States and Iran since the Islamic Revolution. The meeting at Islamabad’s Serena Hotel—an enduring symbol of the Aga Khan’s contribution to Pakistani mehmaan-nawazi—brought together Vice President J D Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Islamabad positioning itself as the convening power behind the encounter.
The shock was understandable. The conclusions drawn from it, however, have been largely misplaced.
Pakistan’s achievement in Islamabad was primarily about optics and its foundations remain fragile. A country associated in recent memory with exporting instability and terror, dependent on IMF bailouts and grappling with internal fractures has managed, briefly, to present itself as a moderate Muslim interlocutor with convening authority.
But this should not surprise us. What is at work is a familiar pattern—what might be called chalaki in Urdu—the Kautilyan dexterity with which Rawalpindi and Islamabad have inserted themselves into Trump’s strategic calculus through a mix of flattery, transactional engagement bordering on skullduggery and opportunism.
As the American South Asia expert Stephen P Cohen observed during the Cold War in the 1980s, India would at times deny him a visa while General Zia-ul-Haq offered him a plane to the Afghan border. Pakistan’s centralised, praetorian decision-making structure allow for a nimbleness that India’s bureaucracy often cannot match. Its longstanding partnership with China only reinforces this flexibility.
Yet, this moment is unlikely to endure. No agreement emerged from the meeting and none may be imminent despite the hopes floated. Any progress would have to contend with a fragmented Iran negotiating from a position of constraint, an unpredictable American administration led by a deranged President oscillating between deal-making and denunciation, and a Pakistani state whose domestic legitimacy continues to erode. What took place at the Serena Hotel may amount to little more than an Andy Warhol-esque 15 minutes of fame. The architecture of this diplomacy may appear elegant; its foundations are less certain.
This is precisely the moment for India to think more clearly—and more ambitiously—about its own strengths, which it has consistently underutilised. India’s assets in the extended neighbourhood are not Pakistan’s; they are of an entirely different order. Where Pakistan offers tactical flexibility and geographic utility, India brings something rarer: the accumulated authority of a democracy that has, over millennia, engaged with the Persian world, Central Asia, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean region not as a colonial extractor, but as a civilisation in sustained dialogue and whose contemporary record, for the most, is true to that legacy. This is not rhetoric. It is a strategic asset—if India chooses to use it.
The question is whether Indian foreign policy has the imagination to match these strengths. India’s strategic culture has often been more comfortable with restraint than initiative, more fluent in the grammar of hedging than in the practice of shaping regional architecture. When a rival scores a diplomatic success, the instinct is to critique rather than to rethink. The Islamabad moment demands precisely that rethinking.
India’s relationship with Iran runs deeper than anything Pakistan can offer. Persian shaped Mughal court culture, Urdu poetry and the administrative vocabulary of the subcontinent. Shia intellectual traditions in Iran resonate with longstanding institutions in India—from Lucknow’s imambara culture to scholarly exchanges across centuries. These are not mere soft-power talking points; they are the foundations of a relationship that can be activated with political will.
These connections are not only historical; they are also personal and lived. In my own family, an heirloom survives in the form of the Sikandarnama, a khamsa by 12th-century Persian poet Nizami, written in exquisite calligraphy by my great-grandfather. It is a reminder that these civilisational ties were not distant abstractions, but part of a shared cultural inheritance—one that can still inform contemporary statecraft. The deep ethnic fault lines—along the lines that exist between Shias and Sunnis in Pakistan—have no resonance in India.
Similarly, India’s standing in the Gulf—built on decades of labour migration, remittances and the quiet contribution of millions of Indian workers—has created a reservoir of goodwill that neither Pakistan nor China can replicate. The Arab street does not conflate India with its adversaries. That, too, is a strategic advantage, if recognised as such.
Equally, India’s relationship with Israel adds another layer to this strategic profile. What may appear, in narrower geopolitical frames, as a zero-sum alignment is better understood as evidence of India’s ability to sustain diverse partnerships. The capacity to engage Israel while retaining credibility across the Arab world and Iran is not a liability; it is a diplomatic strength. There have, of course, been tactical missteps. Narendra Modi’s high-profile visit to Israel before the current war and the delay in formally conveying condolences on the death of Ali Khamenei created avoidable perceptions. But these are tactical errors, not strategic contradictions. They should be acknowledged and then moved beyond.
None of this suggests that India should replicate Pakistan’s role or seek to mediate in US-Iran relations. Instead, India should articulate its own strategic idiom, rooted in civilisational depth rather than transactional utility.
That means sustaining the partnership with Israel, while engaging Iran not merely through the lens of energy and sanctions, but as a long-term partner whose regional role matters independently of Washington’s shifting priorities. It means treating Central Asia as a natural civilisational hinterland, not just a transit space. And it means leveraging India’s democratic legitimacy and reputation as a responsible power to shape the broader regional order—proactively, not reactively.
The Islamabad meeting should not generate anxiety. Pakistan has demonstrated, once again, that even a State with limited resources can occasionally punch above its weight. India, with far greater resources and standing, has no excuse for punching below its own.
The last time I was at the Serena Hotel was for a Pugwash peace meeting, where President Pervez Musharraf engaged with a Track II delegation. That process lasted only weeks. This moment may last even less.
Amitabh Mattoo | Dean, School of International Studies, JNU; former member, National Security Advisory Board
(Views are personal)