In the grand theatre of international relations, admiration is the cheapest currency diplomacy trades in. It costs nothing to laud a nation’s credentials, invoke its ancient wisdom, salute its statesmanship and then proceed to sideline it entirely. The BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi last week offered a masterclass in this cynical art. Convened under India’s chairmanship, the gathering was designed to forge collective resolve around the Iran-US conflict that has convulsed global energy markets since late February. It ended not with a communiqué, but with a contradiction that had India’s name written all over.
What the summit produced, beyond the predictable procedural failure, was a brazen and meticulously documented display of duplicitous diplomacy by two nations that routinely present themselves as India’s most dependable strategic partners: Iran and Russia. While their foreign ministers publicly extolled New Delhi’s virtues as peacemaker, bridge-builder and indispensable mediator, their prior actions had already told a different story. It was one of calculated exclusion dressed up in the language of admiration.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Delhi to press the BRICS members to unite against what he termed “violations of international law” and “Western hegemony”. The summit’s collapse, driven largely by Iran’s insistence on explicit condemnation of US-Israeli “aggression”, predictably left the conclave fractured and fruitless. Yet even amid this discord, Araghchi found time to lavish India with praise. In post-meeting remarks, he declared that New Delhi could play a “greater role” in promoting peace in West Asia, welcomed any “constructive role by India”, and rhapsodised about the Chabahar port as a “golden gate” to Central Asia, promising safe passage for friendly vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and readiness to resume oil supplies. The words flowed warmly, graciously, almost effusively. They were also entirely hollow.
Russia’s Sergey Lavrov performed the same act with greater precision. He drew a pointed distinction between Pakistan’s current role as facilitator of short-term US-Iran dialogues and India’s vastly superior credentials for long-term, structural mediation. “If they seek a long-term mediator between Iran and its Arab friends,” he observed, “this role could be played by India, considering its vast diplomatic experience and international standing.” He also suggested that India as BRICS chair could host preliminary conversations between Iran and the UAE to forestall future hostilities, leveraging relationships built across decades of careful, patient diplomacy. These were not throwaway pleasantries. They were careful, calibrated affirmations precise in their praise, precise in their pointlessness.
For both nations had already made their choices. And India was conspicuously absent from them. Since the US-Israeli strikes in February that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggered a catastrophic spiral of missile barrages, a fragile ceasefire and a de facto blockade of Hormuz, India had signalled its readiness to intervene at every available turn. Prime Minister Narendra Modi advocated de-escalation from the very first day, drawing on historical relations with Iran rooted in three decades of energy cooperation and a deep cultural affinity. It offered back-channel facilitation. It offered mediation plainly, repeatedly, without condition as the one power capable of speaking credibly to all sides without the taint of ideological alignment. The offer was neither accepted nor acknowledged. Instead, Tehran turned to Islamabad.
Pakistani mediation produced the April 2026 ceasefire framework. America-Iran talks were hosted in Islamabad on April 11-12. Iranian ministers made multiple visits to Pakistan, shuttling proposals across a fragile diplomatic corridor and personally sustaining the truce through repeated high-level engagement. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif seized the moment with characteristic fanfare, declaring it “a matter of pride for the nation” that Pakistan had brought the US and Iran to the table after 47 years of estrangement. Congratulatory calls flooded in from European capitals, Gulf monarchies and Asian diplomatic missions.
In India, the reaction was sharp and unsparing. Strategic analysts and opposition voices alike demanded answers: why had India, with its deeper historical leverage with Tehran, superior infrastructure, broader global credibility and genuine desire for regional stability, been kept away from the high table? The choice of Islamabad as venue deepened the affront. The message was unmistakable: tactical convenience had been allowed to trump strategic partnership, and India had been made to watch from the gallery. Moreover, Iran’s decision to impose broader restrictions on movements through the Straits of Hormuz compounded this duplicity and disrupted supplies, and aggravated India’s energy calculations in ways other nations largely avoided a disparity that carried the unmistakable scent of deliberate pressure.
Russia, Iran’s most steadfast political and military backer, bears its own share of culpability. Moscow possesses leverage over Tehran that no other power can replicate. Had Lavrov genuinely believed India to be the ideal long-term broker, it could have used every instrument to mount pressure on Iran. It did not. Modi’s personal rapport with President Trump, India’s singular ability to engage Washington, Tehran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi simultaneously without ideological baggage are precisely the assets Lavrov publicly celebrated. That Moscow neither championed nor protected India’s inclusion was not an oversight. It was a deliberate choice dressed in the language of praise. India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy and one of its largest energy importers, has not merely a stake in resolution but a civilisational responsibility to pursue it.
The reckoning, however, is coming and it is coming for Islamabad first. Pakistan’s mediation drive has collapsed under the weight of its own limitations. Its leverage was always transactional, never structural. Confidence in Islamabad’s ability to deliver durable outcomes has drained away. Iran now stands at a crossroads. Internally pressured, economically isolated and diplomatically exhausted, Tehran must confront a simple, inconvenient truth. India, the partner it flattered and sidelined, possesses everything it now desperately needs. India’s diplomatic capital is not borrowed. It has been earned across decades of principled, patient engagement with every stakeholder in this conflict. The BRICS summit inadvertently became a morality play about the cost of shortsightedness.
For India, it delivered an unambiguous lesson: in diplomacy, as in life, being praised is not the same as being respected, and being celebrated is not the same as being included. A genuine pivot towards New Delhi would not merely vindicate the public endorsements offered so freely by Iran in Delhi. The stage now demands a statesman. Tehran, along with Moscow, must decide to walk the talk.
Read all columns by Prabhu Chawla
PRABHU CHAWLA
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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