Tharoor sides with govt’s ‘cautious stand’ on Iran war
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said he understands the Indian government’s desire to take a cautious stand on the conflict between US-Israel and Iran, and hoped that it could make a public call to both sides to end the war quickly.
The former minister of state for external affairs also stated that the government should have immediately offered public condolences to Iran over the death of its former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and acted on similar lines as it had done in the aftermath of the demise of then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Tharoor asserted that in the current circumstances, a good group of countries not party to the conflict on either side could go to both sides and ask them to call off the conflict, and India should be at the forefront of this.
Asked about assertions from various quarters that India should have condemned the assassination of Khamenei in a US-Israel strike, Tharoor said, “I don’t know about condemning it, but we should certainly have condoled it. After all (he was) the spiritual leader of a country with which he has friendly relations. It would have been appropriate, the day it happened, for us to express public condolences and share the grief of his loved ones and of his nation just as two years ago when president Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, we immediately issued a condolence as well as announced national mourning.”
Tharoor noted that the moment the Iranian embassy opened the condolence book, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri went and signed the book, which was a “good thing”, he said. “But I guess we could have been a bit more... it is simply the courteous thing to do for any country,” Tharoor said.
“But apart from that, I think I understand the government’s desire to take, for the lack of a better word, a cautious stand,” he said.
Meanwhile, Congress’ Manish Tewari also supported the government’s cautious approach, saying India has limited stakes in West Asia and should be careful in its positioning. He noted that the region isn’t a single conflict but multiple overlapping wars, adding that the Iran–Israel–US situation is complex. “It’s not our war,” he said, emphasising that India has largely been a marginal player in the region.
