Oil slicks. Bodies floating. Over 80 sailors pulled from the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka's coast, many still missing. The Iris Dena — an Iranian destroyer with 180 men aboard — is now on the ocean floor. The US-Israel war on Iran, launched just days ago, has not stayed in the Gulf. It has arrived in India's waters, India's neighbourhood, India's strategic backyard. And New Delhi, with nearly one crore citizens in the Gulf and energy lifelines running through the Strait of Hormuz, can no longer afford the luxury of studied silence.

Before we take this analysis ahead, let's check on the latest from Iran vs Israel-US war:

Coming back to the question we started with – the alleged "silence" from India.

India signed LEMOA — the logistics agreement with Washington — for interoperability. Now the United States, with its Navy being pushed back by Iranian missiles, may want something far more uncomfortable: Indian waters as a fallback haven.

Strategic analyst Zorawar Daulet Singh has already flagged this issue. "There might be pressure on Delhi to activate the US-India maritime logistics agreement to allow US naval assets to fall back on Indian territorial waters," he posted on X (formerly Twitter). His warning is unambiguous — the moment India allows that, it stops being a bystander. It becomes a party.

Iran won't wait for a press briefing from South Block. As analyst AQaiyyum put it with brutal clarity in her X post: "Iran won't ask for proof. Iran will just ask — whose side are you on? And India's silence will be read as: America's."

Echoing similar sentiments on the sinking of Iris Dena, Congress leader Pawan Khera hit out at the Narendra Modi government. "Today, an Iranian naval vessel - returning from the Milan 2026 International Fleet Review, where it had been invited by India - was sunk by a U.S. submarine at the edge of Indian waters near Sri Lanka. Does India have no influence left in its own neighbourhood? Or has that space also been quietly ceded to Washington and Tel Aviv?" he posted on X.

Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, writing in The Indian Express, called New Delhi's silence "disturbing" and invoked Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — the world as one family. "At a time when much of the Global South, along with major powers and India's partners in BRICS such as Russia and China, have kept their distance, India's high-profile political endorsement without moral clarity marks a visible and troubling departure," she said, recalling former BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee advocated for India's strong civilisational and modern-day ties with Iran.

"At moments when the rules-based order is under visible strain, silence is abdication," she said.

She is right that silence is not a foreign policy. But India's silence is not neutrality. That is drift. And drift, in a live conflict, is a choice — just not one India consciously made, possibly for now.

Source: India Latest News, Breaking News Today, Top News Headlines | Times Now