For dealing with US, India needs to “look at the way Iran has handled it”: Saeed Naqvi

By Mehdi Moosvi

Originally published on Press TV

India must deal with the United States the way the Islamic Republic of Iran has, says a senior Indian journalist, noting that the tariff fallout is a sign of “diplomatic miscalculation.”

In an interview, Saeed Naqvi, a veteran journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi, said India has allowed itself to be pushed around by the US.

“The tariff fallout is a sign of a diplomatic miscalculation. We shifted altogether, while on one hand, the Russians continue to give us oil, they didn’t expect any special favors, so we took that oil, but we wanted to be an American proxy,” he stated.

“Look at the way Iran has handled it, completely indifferent, but here New Delhi made its absolute surrender in every possible intellectual way.”

After announcing a sweeping 25 percent tariff on India recently, US President Donald Trump threatened New Delhi for continuing to buy oil from Russia and profiting from it, warning that he would be “substantially raising the tariff paid by India to the USA.”

Earlier, Trump signed an executive order that authorized the tariffs, claiming that India maintains very high tariff rates on US goods and continues to purchase Russian oil and defense equipment, which he alleged is facilitating Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

New Delhi rejected Trump’s criticism over its energy trade ties with Russia, calling the rhetoric and imposition of tariffs “unjustified and unreasonable.”

Officials in India emphasized that Washington had earlier supported such trade and noted that both the European Union and the US still conduct significantly more business with Russia than India does.

Naqvi, who has closely followed international politics for decades as a TV journalist, said “the ties with Russia are at the moment more secure than the problem that has happened.”

“Trump’s newly imposed tariffs are an American economic retaliation, and a geopolitical maneuver to not let India slide to BRICS,” he said.

According to geopolitical observers, the imposed tariffs, which are tied to India’s continued engagement with Russia, represent an act of preserving American hegemony and the unipolar world through economic coercion.

This move appears intended to signal disapproval of India’s pursuit of strategic autonomy, deter other countries from establishing independent alliances, and emphasize the importance of the US-led global order.

Naqvi said the collective West is in irreversible decline, and as history shows, great powers rarely go quietly, adding that Trump’s tariffs are just one attempt to stall the slide, but in doing so, the US has left India stuck in a strategic limbo.

“The G7 (Group of Seven) has grown weaker now, while many countries are coming forward to join the BRICS,” he said in a detailed phone conversation.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic liberalization in 1991, India turned towards the US to fill the vacuum, which was driven by a combination of economic needs, strategic shifts, and geopolitical calculations.

“The problem lies that after India got rid of colonialism and imperialism, and to tackle and create another space out of it, Jawaharlal Nehru (independent India’s first prime minister) dreamt of a non-alignment, which the government abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it was suggested to join the US and the collective West. Now, after the 2008 financial crisis, the US and the West started declining, and have no symptoms of recovery, so we were left neither here nor there,” Naqvi noted.

“Our elites, especially our foreign policy elite are extremely Western oriented, and they have become habitual of seeing the world which is Western in nature, meanwhile, the occurring world developments, for which the Indian government should be critical, but this didn’t emerge within our elite because of the Indian media, which has no understanding of foreign affairs.”

Over the past decade, New Delhi deepened military, technological, and diplomatic ties with the US, especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

New Delhi became a part of forums like The Quad (US, India, Japan, Australia), signed foundational defense agreements, and was projected as a key US partner in countering China.

Despite India’s rising power status and despite being a “friend” of the US, New Delhi has been publicly punished by a supposed ally, exposing its diplomatic weakness, and the imposition of harsh tariffs is being seen as a betrayal of that goodwill.

The US response to India’s engagement with Moscow suggests that Washington expects even close allies to consider its geopolitical priorities when forming foreign relations.

“Unfortunately, we have emerged as a weak country, and the US has been aware of our weaknesses,” Naqvi remarked.

Observers argue that New Delhi’s recent foreign policy posture has leaned too heavily toward the West, especially the US. What was intended as a strategic alignment, they contend, has risked undermining India’s hard-won autonomy on the global stage.

“For our Foreign Minister, the US is the beginning and the end of the world and instead of being subtle, nuanced, he thought he was going to sit with the West and create a wedge of which New Delhi would be a big part, but the opposite happened,” Naqvi stressed.

“This business of strategic autonomy, you can’t have strategic autonomy if you can’t protect your own nation, and play monkey between two cats, but their demands are different; the West is fighting for its life. New Delhi should make up its mind whether it wants to help it, join them, or if it thinks that it’s not a worthy enough cause, then take alternatives.”

As tensions rise over newly imposed tariffs, Naqvi called for a strategic reset in India’s diplomatic approach. The current standoff, he argues, exposes the limitations of over-reliance on Western partnerships and underscores the need for a more pragmatic recalibration.

“India’s immediate response to the imposed tariffs should be a recalibration of foreign policy, because in the end eventually there are political moves,” he stated.

Originally published on Press TV