Narendra Modi

New Delhi, India — Dressed in a blue Navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in late October, addressed a gathering of the country’s sea warriors.

He listed out the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean — the massive volumes of trade and oil that pass through it. “The Indian Navy is the guardian of the Indian Ocean,” he then said, to loud, proud chants of “Long Live Mother India” from his audience.

Less than five months later, India has been shown up as a “guardian”, unable to protect its own guest.

On Wednesday, the Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, was torpedoed by a US submarine just 44 nautical miles off (81km) southern Sri Lanka, as it was returning home from naval drills hosted by India. During the “Milan” biennial multilateral naval exercise, Indian President Droupadi Murmu had posed with sailors from the Dena.

Yet it took the Indian Navy more than a day after the Iranian warship was struck to respond formally to the attack, which US officials made clear was a sign of how the Donald Trump administration was willing and ready to expand its war against Iran.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”

Tehran is furious over the attack on its warship hundreds of miles away from home. And Iran made sure to note that the IRIS Dena warship was  “a guest of India’s navy”, returning after completing the exercise it joined upon New Delhi’s invitation.

“The US has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles [3,218km] away from Iran’s shores,” Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said, referring to the sinking of the frigate. “Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”

Now, the IRIS Dena is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and more than 80 Iranian sailors, who marched during joint parades and posed for selfies with Indian naval officers during their two-week visit, are dead.

What has also fallen, said retired Indian naval officers and analysts, is India’s self-image as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean. Instead, they said, the US attack on the Dena has exposed the limits of India’s power and influence in its own maritime back yard.

‘War reaches India’s backyard’

After participating in the naval exercises, IRIS Dena left Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast on February 26. It was hit in international waters, just south of Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, in the early hours of March 4, local time.

In response, Sri Lankan Navy rescuers recovered more than 80 bodies and picked up 32 survivors, reportedly including the commander and some senior officers from the warship. More than 100 men are still missing.

In a tweet welcoming the Dena to the naval drills, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Command had posted: “Her arrival … [reflects] long-standing cultural links between the two nations [Iran and India]”.

Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, the former vice chief of India’s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that he attended the Iranian parade at the function.

“I met and really liked them, especially their march for sailors travelling thousands of miles,” Sinha said. “It is always sad to see a ship sinking. But in a war, emotions don’t work. There’s nothing ethical in a war.”

Sinha said that the Indian Ocean — central to the strategic and energy security of the nation with the world’s largest population — was thought to be a fairly safe zone earlier. “But that is not the case, as we are learning now,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The unfolding battle [between the US and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other] has reached India’s back yard.
New Delhi has to be concerned,” Sinha, who served in the Indian Navy for four decades, added. “The liberty we enjoyed in the Indian Ocean has apparently shrunk.”

India’s Catch-22 situation

Only on Thursday evening did the Indian Navy issue any formal statement on the attack — more than 24 hours after the Dena was hit by a torpedo.

The Navy said that it received distress signals from the Iranian ship and had decided on deploying resources to help with rescuing sailors. But by then, it said, the Sri Lankan Navy had already stepped to lead the rescue effort.

Neither New Delhi nor the Navy has criticised — even mildly — the decision by the US to sink the Iranian warship.

Military analysts and former Indian naval officers say India is caught in a classic catch-22: Was India aware of the incoming US attack in the Indian Ocean on an Iranian warship, or was it blindsided by a nuclear-submarine in its backyard?

Admiral Arun Prakash, the former chief of India’s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that if New Delhi was blindsided, “it reflects on the US-India relationship directly.”

“If it is a surprise, then that’s a great concern since we have a so-called strategic partnership with the USA.”

And if India knew about the attacks, it would be seen by many as strategically siding with the US and Israel over their war on Iran.

C Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy officer and currently the director of the Society for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, said that the US sinking an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean muddies the Indian perception of itself as a “net security provider” in the region.

Bhaskar said the incident is a “strategic embarrassment” for India and weakens New Delhi’s credibility in the Indian Ocean, while its moral standing “takes a beating” because of the Indian government’s near-silence.

‘India on aggressor’s side’

In the post-colonial world order, India was a leader of the non-alignment movement, the Cold War-era neutrality posture adopted by several developing nations.

India now no longer calls its approach non-alignment, instead referring to it as “strategic autonomy”. But, in reality, it has inched closer to the United States and its allies, most importantly, Israel.

Merely two days before the US and Israel bombed Iran, Modi was in Israel, addressing the Knesset and warmly hugging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called his Indian counterpart a brother.

But Iran, under the late Supreme Leader Khamenei, was a friend of India as well, with New Delhi making strategic, business, and humanitarian investments in the country.

However, Modi has not said a word in condolence after Khamenei’s assassination. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited the Iranian embassy in New Delhi to sign a memorial book. Indian governments normally deploy ministers — not bureaucrats or diplomats — for such sombre occasions.

It is against that backdrop that India’s response to the attack on the Dena has come under scrutiny.

Because the frigate was hit when it was in international waters, India had “no formal responsibility”, said Srinath Raghavan, an Indian military historian and strategic analyst.

“But the US Navy’s actions underline both the spreading geography of this war and the sharp limits of India’s ability to manage, let alone control, its fallout,” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

Diplomatically, India has “objectively positioned itself on the side of the aggressors in this war,” he said, by “acts of commission — visit to Israel on the eve of war — and of omission, with not even [an] official condolence, let alone condemnation, of the assassination of the Iranian head of state.” Modi visited Israel on February 25-26.

Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of India’s opposition Congress party, said the Modi government had recklessly abdicated “India’s strategic and national interests”. And the government’s silence “demeans India’s core national interests and destroys our foreign policy, carefully and painstakingly built and followed by successive governments over the years.”

In addition, Raghavan highlighted that Modi has only criticised Iran’s retaliation, which threatens to drag the Gulf region to the brink of war.

“It is difficult not to conclude that India has drastically downgraded its interests in the relationship with Iran,” he said.

“All of this detracts from India’s credibility as a player in the region and will have short and long-term consequences for the equities in West Asia [as the Middle East is referred to in India],” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, saying it stands by the country “with full conviction” – despite accusations of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Modi gave a speech to the Knesset, or parliament, on Wednesday, on the first day of his two-day visit and received a standing ovation as he stressed India’s enduring support for Israel.

It was the first time an Indian leader addressed the Knesset.

“India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond,” said Modi, condemning the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas-led fighters as “barbaric”, adding “no cause can justify the murder of civilians”.

India’s leader was earlier greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport, where a welcoming ceremony was held.

In his own Knesset speech, Netanyahu thanked India for “standing by” Israel in the wake of October 7, and said the two nations shared “common interests”. He described Modi as “more than a friend, a brother”.

Modi said New Delhi expressed “strong support” for the Gaza peace initiative approved by the UN Security Council in November. It “offers a pathway”, he said, adding India believes “it holds the promise of a just and durable peace for all the people of the region”.

‘Trusted partners’

The Indian leader said the two countries are “trusted partners” and this “contributes to global stability and prosperity”.

He described their relations as “vital” for trade and security, and hailed “synergy” on artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and other topics.

“We are committed to further consolidating this relationship across many sectors,” he added.

Modi’s first trip to Israel was in 2017 after relations between the two countries warmed following his election in 2014. Netanyahu also visited India in 2018.

Haaretz newspaper journalist Gideon Levy told Al Jazeera that Modi’s visit cannot be underestimated.

“India is a highly important country and [Modi] showing himself … in these times when public opinion in India is very critical about Israel is a step that cannot be underestimated,” said Levy.

He pointed to similarities between Netanyahu and Modi, saying both are “nationalist, populist in a way, quite conservative, and hawkish. Both countries carry also some stains, Kashmir, Palestine, the West Bank”.

Israel’s largest arms buyer

In September 2025, India and Israel signed the Bilateral Investment Treaty to expand trade during far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s visit to India.

India is Israel’s largest arms buyer, spending $20.5bn on Israeli weapons between 2020 and 2024. In 2024, trade between the two, largely based on defence and security, stood at $3.9bn.

Modi has received criticism for his support for Israel during its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, which has killed at least 72,073 people and wounded 171,756. At least 615 of those deaths occurred during the “ceasefire” agreed between Israel and Hamas last October.

Last week, India was one of the more than 100 countries condemning Israel’s recent moves to expand its control of the occupied West Bank and move towards annexation.

Imran Masood, a parliamentarian for India’s Congress party, urged Modi to address Gaza during his visit, saying, “if there is any morality then he should talk about death of children in Gaza”, ANI news agency reported.

“India’s stand is clear … that it supports Palestine,” said Masood.

Marian Alexander Baby, leader of the Communist Party of India, said Modi’s embrace of Israel is “a betrayal of India’s anti-colonial legacy and our long-standing position in support of the right to self determination of the Palestinian people, reaffirmed by UN resolutions that India has co-sponsored and voted for”.

Modi continues his visit to Israel on Thursday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will begin a two-day visit to Israel on Wednesday. Modi’s first trip to Israel was in 2017, when he was the first Indian leader to ever visit the country.

India was among the countries that opposed the creation of Israel in 1948, and for decades was one of the most forceful non-Arab critics of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians. It only established diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, but since 2014, when Modi came to power, relations between the two countries have flourished.

Here is more about what is on the agenda for Modi’s visit, and why it is significant.

Who will Modi meet, and what will they talk about?

Modi is expected to land at the Ben Gurion international airport outside Tel Aviv at 12:45pm local time (10:45 GMT).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to welcome Modi at the airport, as he did during the Indian premier’s 2017 visit. The two leaders are scheduled to hold talks shortly after.

Then, at 4:30pm (14:30 GMT), Modi is scheduled to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem. He then returns to Tel Aviv for the night.

On the morning of February 26, Modi is scheduled to visit the Yad Vashem museum, a memorial to Holocaust victims, before meeting Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Modi and Netanyahu will then meet again and oversee the signing of agreements between the two countries, before Modi departs Israel in the afternoon.

Overall, Modi and Netanyahu aim to use this visit to bolster strategic economic and defence agreements between India and Israel, officials from both sides have said.

“We don’t compete, we rather complement each other,” JP Singh, India’s ambassador to Israel, told state broadcaster All India Radio on Monday, speaking of relations with Israel. “Israel is really good at innovation, science and technology. Therefore, there will be a lot of discussion on AI, cybersecurity and quantum.”

The two countries signed a new Bilateral Investment Treaty in September last year, replacing the 1996 investment treaty, to provide “certainty and protection” to investors from both countries. They are also aiming to upgrade existing bilateral security agreements at this meeting.

In a video posted on the Israeli Embassy’s social media channels on Monday, Israel’s ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, said: “Our economic partnership is gaining real momentum. We signed a bilateral investment treaty, and we are moving forward to sign a free trade agreement, hopefully this year.”

Azar said that Israel wants to encourage Indian infrastructure companies to come to Israel to build and invest in the country.

He added: “We will deepen our defence relationship by updating our security agreements.”

In an X post of his own on Sunday, Netanyahu wrote that he is looking forward to greeting Modi in Jerusalem.

“We are partners in innovation, security, and a shared strategic vision. Together, we are building an axis of nations committed to stability and progress,” he wrote.

“From AI to regional cooperation, our partnership continues to reach new heights,” Netanyahu added.

How are India-Israel relations?

Relations between India and Israel have improved exponentially over the years. While still under British rule in the 1920s and 1930s, India strongly identified with the Palestinian struggle for independence.

In 1917, the United Kingdom signed the Balfour Declaration, promising Jews who had been displaced from Europe due to Adolf Hitler’s oppression a homeland in the British Mandate in Palestine. This was opposed by many nations, including India, which was fighting British colonialism at the time.

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French,” Mahatma Gandhi, India’s most prominent freedom fighter who is revered as the father of the nation, wrote in an article in his weekly newspaper Harijan on November 26, 1938.

India was among the nations opposed to the creation of Israel in 1948. In 1949, India also voted against Israel’s UN membership. While it recognised Israel as a state in 1950, it was not until 1992 that the two formalised diplomatic relations, and economic relations gradually grew over the following two decades.

Since Modi became India’s leader in 2014, there has been a major shift in the relationship between India and Israel. Nine years ago, Modi was the first Indian prime minister ever to visit Israel.

India is currently Israel’s second-largest trading partner in Asia, after China. According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, trade jumped from $200m in 1992 to $6.5bn in 2024.

India’s main exports to Israel include pearls, precious stones, automotive diesel, chemicals, machinery, and electrical equipment; imports include petroleum, chemical machinery and transport equipment.

Azad Essa, a senior reporter at Middle East Eye and author of the 2023 book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, told Al Jazeera that Modi’s visit to Israel shows how far India’s relations with Israel have evolved over the past decade.

“Whereas a partnership existed, it was a lot more limited prior to Modi. [New] Delhi has now emerged as Israel’s strongest non-Western ally, so much so that it is now considered a ‘special relationship’, rooted in strategic cooperation and ideological convergence,” Essa said.

“This visit will be Netanyahu’s opportunity to offer appreciation to Modi, and will be used by him to show Israelis that he is a well-respected and popular leader in the Global South.”

Under Modi, India has become Israel’s top arms customer. And in 2024, during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Indian arms firms supplied Israel with rockets and explosives, according to an Al Jazeera investigation.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) envisions India as a Hindu homeland, echoing Israel’s self-image as a Jewish state. Both India and Israel frame “Islamic terrorism” as a key threat, a label critics say is used to justify wider anti-Muslim policies.

“The alliance between India and Israel is not just about weapon sales or trade. It is about India’s open embrace of authoritarianism and militarism in building a supremacist state in Israel’s image,” Essa said.

“It is also a story about how security, nationalism and democratic language can be used to justify and normalise increasingly illiberal policies, and this has implications for democracies everywhere.”

Why is this visit significant?

Modi’s visit comes at a time of rising and complex geopolitical tensions in and around the Middle East.

Despite the warm relations between the two countries in recent decades, Modi’s trip comes just a week after India joined more than 100 countries in condemning Israel’s de facto expansion in the occupied West Bank. New Delhi signed the statement on February 18 – a day later than most – after initially appearing hesitant.

This week, Netanyahu claimed that he plans to form a new regional bloc of countries, which he termed a “hexagon” alliance, to stand against “radical” Sunni and Shia-majority nations.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said this alliance would include Israel, India, Greece and Cyprus, along with other unnamed Arab, African and Asian states. None of these governments has officially endorsed this plan, including India.

Analysts said Modi’s visit will be viewed by many as an endorsement of Israeli policies, however.

“The timing of the visit is notable because it comes at a time when Netanyahu has lost immense credibility around the world, and to have the leader of the world’s so-called largest democracy visiting Israel and showing affection to Netanyahu, who has a warrant in his name from the International Criminal Court, is a ringing endorsement of him and Israel’s policies,” Essa said.

Modi’s visit also comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the United States.

India and Iran have long had a cooperative relationship. After Modi visited Iran in 2016, the two countries signed a major deal, allowing India to develop the strategically located port of Chabahar on Iran’s southeastern coast. However, after the US imposed additional sanctions on Iran last year and threatened to penalise all countries that do business with Tehran, India has reportedly started moving out of Chabahar.

In June 2025, India did not join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO’s) condemnation of Israel’s attacks on Iran during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. However, it did join a later condemnation by the BRICS grouping of major emerging economies of the Israeli and US attacks on Iran.

The US, which has been applying its own pressure on India over the past year in retaliation for its purchase of Russian oil, is building up a vast array of military assets in the Arabian Sea, close to Iran, as President Donald Trump increases pressure on Iran to agree to a deal over its nuclear programme and stock of ballistic missiles.

Trump said last Friday that he was considering a limited strike on Iran if Tehran does not reach a deal with the US. “I guess I can say I am considering that,” he told reporters.

Iran has said it is seeking a diplomatic solution, but will defend itself if Washington resorts to military action.

Israel will likely be a front-line participant in any escalation that might follow from US strikes or Iranian retaliation, analysts say.

India’s PM Modi will mark his second visit to Israel with the two countries having deepened ties under the Hindu nationalist PM.

New Delhi, India – As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerged from his plane at Ben Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv on July 4, 2017, his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, waited for him at the other end of the red carpet laid out on the tarmac.

Minutes later, the leaders hugged. Speaking at the airport, Modi said his visit was a “path-breaking journey” – it was the first time an Indian prime minister had visited Israel. Netanyahu recalled their first meeting in New York in 2014, where, he said, “we agreed to break down the remaining walls between India and Israel”.

Nine years later, as Modi prepares to fly to Israel on February 25 for his second visit, he can largely claim to have accomplished that mission, analysts say. A relationship that was once frowned upon in India, and then carried out clandestinely, is now one of New Delhi’s most public friendships. Modi has frequently described Netanyahu as a “dear friend”, despite the International Criminal Court having issued an arrest warrant in late 2024 for the Israeli premier over alleged war crimes carried out during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Indian diplomats and officials have justified the country’s pivot towards Israel as a “pragmatic approach” – Israel, with its tech and military expertise, has too much to offer to be ignored, they argue – balanced by efforts from New Delhi to strengthen ties with its Arab allies.

Yet, it has come at a cost, analysts say: to Palestine, and India’s relationship with it, and, according to some experts, to India’s moral credibility.

“The so-called realist turn of India has cost its moral power, which it used to enjoy in the Global South,” said Anwar Alam, a senior fellow with the Policy Perspectives Foundation think tank in New Delhi.

Amid an ongoing war in the Palestinian territory, Modi’s visit “amounts to legitimising the apartheid Israeli state”, Alam told Al Jazeera.

An ideological alliance

India was a staunch advocate for Palestine in the post-colonial world order, with major leaders backing Palestinian independence. In 1947, India opposed the United Nations plan to partition Palestine. And four decades later, in 1988, India became one of the first non-Arab states to recognise Palestine.

The end of the Cold War – India leaned towards the Soviet Union despite officially being non-aligned – forced a change in New Delhi’s calculations. Alongside an outreach to the United States, India also established diplomatic relations with Israel in January 1992.

Since then, defence ties have anchored the relationship, which has also expanded on other fronts in recent years.

Modi’s rise to power in India in 2014 proved to be the catalyst for the biggest shift in relations. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has an ideology rooted in the vision of making India a Hindu nation, a natural homeland for Hindus anywhere in the world – an approach that mirrors, in many ways, Israel’s view of itself as a Jewish homeland. Both Modi and Israel view “Islamic terrorism”, which critics say is also shorthand for justifications needed to pursue broader anti-Muslim policies, as major threats.

Under Modi, India has become Israel’s largest weapons buyer. And in 2024, as Israel waged its war on Gaza, Indian weapons firms sold Israel rockets and explosives, according to an Al Jazeera investigation.

Ahead of Modi’s upcoming visit, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding that aims to further deepen defence ties, with India exploring the joint development of anti-ballistic missile defence with Israel. In Jerusalem, Modi is scheduled to address the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

“Modi’s address is special because of how it underlines the scale of the shift in relations under the Bharatiya Janata Party towards an overtly pro-Israel policy,” Max Rodenbeck, project director at the Washington-based Crisis Group’s Israel-Palestine department, told Al Jazeera.

But Modi’s visit is also personal for Netanyahu, Rodenbeck said. Israel is months away from a national election that is, in effect, a referendum on Netanyahu’s government – from the intelligence failures that enabled the October 7 attack by Palestinian groups to the war on Gaza that followed, as well as his attempts to weaken judicial independence through reforms.

The visit appears “as almost a personal favour to Netanyahu by boosting his image as an international statesman just as Israeli election campaigning is getting underway”, Rodenbeck said.

While several Western leaders have visited Israel since it began its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, few leaders from the Global South have made the trip.

At a time when the Gaza war has shrunk the set of countries willing to be seen as Israel’s friends, especially among emerging economies, Modi’s visit is significant.

Israel does not “have many friends” globally at the moment, said Kabir Taneja, the executive director of the Middle East office at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank. “So India is playing that role,” he added. “[Modi’s visit] sort of shows that Israel is not fully isolated.”

The July 2017 visit

In many ways, Modi’s visit to Israel this week will look to build on his July 2017 trip, which was a watershed moment in the bilateral ties, analysts note.

No Indian Prime Minister had previously visited Israel, but even lower-level diplomats would, until then, pair their Israel visits with parallel engagements in the Palestinian territory.

Modi broke with that policy. He did not visit Palestine in 2017, only making a trip there in 2018, by which time he had already also hosted Netanyahu in New Delhi. It had also been the first visit by an Israeli premier to India.

The 2017 Modi visit has been under scrutiny recently. An email released by the US Justice Department as part of the Jeffrey Epstein files showed that the late disgraced financier had advised a billionaire close to Modi during his trip.

After the visit on July 6, Epstein, a convicted sex offender, had emailed an unidentified individual he referred to as “Jabor Y”, saying: “The Indian Prime minister modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED. !”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has dismissed these claims as the “trashy ruminations” of a convicted criminal.

Nonetheless, Modi’s visit to Israel solidified the bilateral relationship. Trade between the two nations has grown from $200m in 1992 to more than $6bn in 2024.

India is still Israel’s second-largest Asian trading partner after China in goods, dominated by diamonds, petroleum, and chemicals. India and Israel signed a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) in September last year and have both been looking to close negotiations on a free trade deal.

At the same time, people-to-people ties have grown as well. After Israel banned Palestinians from working in the country following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, thousands of Indians lined up to work in Israeli construction companies.

“India and Israel have a fairly deep strategic and economic relationship that has been flourishing since Prime Minister Modi came to office,” said the Observer Research Foundation’s Taneja.

Modi was also among the first world leaders to condemn the Hamas-led attack and throw India’s support behind Israel.

“It really, really feeds into India’s posture against terrorism,” Taneja said about the India-Israel ties. “Israel is a country that India sees facing similar crisis when it comes to terrorism.”

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring armed attacks on its territory and in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has accepted that its nationals have, in some instances, been behind these attacks, but has rejected accusations that it has trained or financed the attackers.

Over the horizon, a different Middle East?

Despite its close ties with Israel, New Delhi under Modi has not completely abandoned its position on the Palestinian cause, calling for a two-state solution and peace through dialogue. But it has been increasingly hesitant to criticise Israel over its war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory.

India’s historical support for the Palestinian cause is rooted in its pivotal role in the non-alignment movement, the Cold War-era neutrality posture adopted by several developing nations. Even before India gained independence, the leader of its freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, decried the “imposition of Jews over Arabs” through the creation of Israel.

India now no longer calls its approach non-alignment, instead referring to it as “strategic autonomy”.

“The Middle East is the only geography where this policy actually functions, and also provide[s] dividend[s],” Taneja told Al Jazeera. “India has good relations with Israel, Arab powers and Iran alike. One of the reasons [it works is] because India does not step into regional conflicts and confrontations.”

But under pressure from US President Donald Trump, India has stopped buying oil from Iran and taken steps to end its work on developing the strategically significant Chabahar port, which New Delhi viewed as a gateway into landlocked Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Now, Trump is threatening to attack Iran. The US has amassed warships and jets near Iran, even as Washington and Tehran continue to engage in diplomatic talks.

“I suspect India may be looking over the horizon to a Middle East where Iran has suffered heavy attack from the US and Israel, and no longer projects power in the region. In these circumstances, Israel will emerge as something of a regional hegemon,” said the Crisis Group’s Rodenbeck.

“India is perhaps positioning itself to benefit. Also, Modi sees Israel as influential in Washington, and may hope that friendliness to Israel wins points with Congress and Trump, which India badly needs.”

Israel to join with India, Greece, Cyprus and other Arab, African, Asian countries that ‘see eye to eye’, says PM.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that Israel plans to build a network of allied nations in or around the Middle East to collectively stand against what he called “radical” adversaries.

Netanyahu made the comments on Sunday while announcing the upcoming visit to Israel of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country the Israeli leader said would be part of the “axis of nations that see eye to eye” with Israel.

Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, also referred to Greece, Cyprus and other unnamed Arab, African and Asian countries.

“In the vision I see before me, we will create an entire system, essentially a ‘hexagon’ of alliances around or within the Middle East,” Netanyahu said, according to the Times of Israel.

“The intention here is to create an axis of nations that see eye to eye on the reality, challenges, and goals against the radical axes, both the radical Shia axis, which we have struck very hard, and the emerging radical Sunni axis.”

Modi said he fully agrees with Netanyahu on the “bond between India and Israel”, including the “diverse nature of our bilateral relations”.

“India deeply values the enduring friendship with Israel, built on trust, innovation and a shared commitment to peace and progress,” Modi wrote in a post on X.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, its assaults have been weakening the Iran-led “axis of resistance”, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel and Iran also directly clashed last June in a 12-day war, in which the US military also joined to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

Netanyahu did not elaborate on what he meant by “emerging radical Sunni axis”, but he has previously identified the Muslim Brotherhood as its leading element.

Relations between Israel and several predominantly Sunni Muslim states have soured amid the bloodshed in Gaza, including with Turkiye, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sharply criticised Netanyahu, and Saudi Arabia, which has accused Israel of genocide.

Prospects for normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia also appear to be eroding. In recent months, the kingdom has rebuked Israel’s recognition of Somalia’s breakaway region, Somaliland, as well as the Israeli moves towards annexation in the occupied West Bank.

Since 2020, Israel has pushed to establish formal ties with Arab and Muslim states as a way to shore up its regional standing as part of the US-backed so-called “Abraham Accords”.

Under that framework, Israel has been enjoying close relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has cancelled his keynote speech at India’s flagship AI summit just hours before he was due to take the stage on Thursday.

Gates, who has faced renewed scrutiny over his past ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, withdrew to “ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities”, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.

The five-day India AI Impact Summit 2026 was meant to showcase India’s ambitions in the booming sector, with the country expecting to attract more than $200bn in investment over the next two years.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had billed the summit as an opportunity for India to shape the future of AI, drawing high-profile attendees, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Instead, it has been dogged by controversy, from Gates’s abrupt exit to an incident in which an Indian university tried to pass off a Chinese-made robotic dog as its own innovation.

So, what exactly went wrong at India’s flagship AI gathering and why has it drawn such intense scrutiny?

Why Gates’s appearance became an issue

Bill Gates was due to deliver a short but high-profile speech highlighting the opportunities and risks posed by artificial intelligence.

However, in recent weeks, several opposition figures and commentators in Indian media weighed in after emails featuring his name were released in the Epstein files in late January, questioning whether his presence was appropriate.

Despite the discussion, all appeared to be proceeding as planned earlier in the week. On Tuesday, the Gates Foundation’s India office posted on X that Gates would attend the summit and “deliver his keynote as scheduled”.

Then, on Thursday, hours before the scheduled speech, it released a statement saying that “After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities, Mr Gates will not be delivering his keynote address.”

It added that Ankur Vora, president of the Gates Foundation’s Africa and India offices, would deliver the speech instead.

What are the alleged links between Epstein and Gates?

Bill Gates was named in documents related to Epstein released in January by the US Department of Justice.

In a draft email included among the documents, Epstein alleged Gates had engaged in extramarital affairs and sought his help in procuring drugs “to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls”.

It was unclear whether Epstein actually sent the email, and Gates denies any wrongdoing.

The Gates Foundation, in a statement to The New York Times, called the allegations “absolutely absurd and completely false”.

What has India’s government said?

Very little.

Despite criticism and calls from opposition figures to explain the invitation to Gates, the Indian government has not directly addressed the controversy that culminated in Gates’s withdrawal.

While unnamed government sources told local media he would not attend the summit, officials stopped short of explaining why.

Asked about Gates’s participation, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw declined to give a clear answer to reporters, while Modi made no reference to the issue in his public remarks.

Why are the Epstein files a sensitive subject for India?

The controversy surrounding Gates’s planned participation comes close on the heels of a series of disclosures in the Epstein files that have forced the Modi government on the backfoot.

In one email to an unidentified individual he referred to only as “Jabor Y”, Epstein referred to Modi’s historic visit – the first by an Indian prime minister – to Israel in July 2017.

Epstein wrote: “The Indian Prime minister modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED. !”

Modi’s visit to Israel – and his subsequent embrace of the Benjamin Netanyahu government, with military, intelligence and other ties strengthened over the past decade – had already drawn criticism from the opposition Congress party and others, who have accused him of reversing decades of Indian support for the Palestinian cause. India was the first non-Arab nation to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974, and did not establish full diplomatic relations with Israel until 1992.

But the Epstein email turbocharged the opposition criticism of Modi’s Israel policy – with questions now also asked about whether it was influenced by Washington.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs dismissed the Epstein email in an unusually sharply worded statement.

“Beyond the fact of the prime minister’s official visit to Israel in July 2017, the rest of the allusions in the email are little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

But the Epstein cloud continues to hover over India.

The files also show that India’s current oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, exchanged dozens of emails with Epstein after he joined Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.

In many of them, Puti appears to be taking Epstein’s help in getting US investors, such as LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, to visit India. In others, he appears to suggest that he had a fairly comfortable personal relationship with Epstein.

“Please let me know when you are back from your exotic island,” Puri wrote in December 2014, for instance, asking to set up a meeting in which Puri could give Epstein some books to “excite an interest in India”.

Puri, in a new conference, has claimed that he only met Epstein “three or four times”, but the Congress party has argued that the emails suggest a much closer relationship.

Gates’s work in India

The Gates Foundation has long been a key partner in India’s public health and development sectors, backing major vaccination drives, disease prevention campaigns and sanitation programmes.

At the same time, he has had vocal critics, including environmental activist Vandana Shiva, who has argued that Gates’s brand of “philanthro-imperialism” uses wealth to control global food systems.

Gates also faced heavy criticism after a 2024 podcast in which he said India was “a kind of laboratory to try things … that then, when you prove them out in India, you can take to other places” when discussing development programmes and the foundation’s work there.

‘Orion’ the robodog and other controversies

Beyond the fallout over Bill Gates’s cancelled keynote, the AI Impact Summit has faced several controversies.

One incident involved a robotic dog named “Orion”, which Galgotias University, based in the New Delhi suburban town of Greater Noida, presented as its own innovation.

Online users quickly identified the machine as a commercially available Chinese-made model, prompting organisers to ask the institution to vacate its stall.

The event also drew criticism on its opening day after facing logistical issues, including long queues and confusion over entry procedures, according to local media.

On Wednesday, large crowds were seen walking for miles after police cordoned off roads for VIP access.

Dhananjay Yadav, the CEO of a company exhibiting high-tech wearables, made headlines after he reported on social media that devices had been stolen from the company’s stand.

The Times of India later reported that two maintenance workers at the event had been arrested for allegedly stealing the wearables.

When India’s top court banned a controversial scheme in February 2024 that allowed individuals and corporates to make anonymous donations to political parties through opaque electoral bonds, many transparency activists hailed the judgement as a win for democracy.

Between 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced the electoral bonds, and when they were scrapped in 2024, secret donors funnelled nearly $2bn to parties.

More than half of that went to Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has held India’s central government since 2014, and also governs at least 20 Indian states and federally controlled territories, either directly or in coalition with allies.

In striking down the scheme, the Supreme Court said that “political contributions give a seat at the table to the contributor” and that “this access also translates into influence over policymaking”.

But two years later, data shows that big business continues to pump in millions of dollars in funding to political parties, with the BJP retaining its position as the biggest beneficiary, frequently raising serious concerns over a quid pro quo with donors.

The donors have returned to an older funding mechanism: electoral trusts. Introduced in 2013 by the Manmohan Singh government led by the Congress party that preceded Modi, the trusts, unlike bonds, require the donors to disclose their identities and the amount of money being given.

But that relative transparency is not dissuading companies from major mega-donations to parties directly positioned to benefit them through policies and contracts, an analysis of recent political funding by Al Jazeera reveals.

‘Money determines access’

In 2024-25, nine electoral trusts donated a total of $459.2m to political parties, with the BJP receiving $378.6 million — 83 percent of it. The main opposition Congress party got about $36m (8 percent), while other parties received the remaining amount.

This data is sourced from disclosures made during the first full year after the Supreme Court ban on bonds.

Two major corporations stood out, due to their significant financial scale and policy influence:  The Tata Group, founded in 1868 by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, is a global conglomerate with more than 30 companies spanning steel, IT, automobiles, aviation, and more. Its aggregate revenue for FY 2024-25  exceeded $180bn. The Murugappa Group, founded in 1900 by A M Murugappa Chettiar as a money-lending business in Burma (now Myanmar), is a prominent Indian conglomerate with 29 businesses in engineering, agriculture, financial services and beyond. Its turnover stood at $8.53bn in 2024-25.

Documents submitted to the Election Commission of India in 2024-2025 show that the Progressive Electoral Trust, backed by 15 companies belonging to the Tata Group conglomerate, distributed approximately $110.2m to 10 political parties in the run-up to the 2024 general election.

The BJP received about $91.3m – again roughly 83 percent of the total fund – while the Congress got $9.31m, with smaller sums going to several regional parties. Tata made its contribution on April 2, 2024, while Murugappa did so on March 26, 2024.

India’s general elections began on April 19 and concluded on June 1, 2024.

The timing and scale of these donations are significant, say experts. Tata’s donations came within weeks of the government approving two semiconductor projects worth more than $15.2bn announced by the Tata Group in Gujarat and Assam – both BJP-ruled states.

The Modi government also provided additional support of about $5.3bn under India’s plans to promote semiconductor development.

Meanwhile, in February 2024, the Indian government approved a semiconductor assembly and testing facility proposed by CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd, a Murugappa Group company. The project, to be set up in Sanand, Gujarat, with an investment of approximately $870m, also received central and state government incentives.

In the same financial year, disclosures showed that yet another trust called Triumph Electoral Trust received $15.06m from Tube Investments of India Ltd, another Murugappa Group company. The entire money went to the BJP, with no contribution by Triumph to other parties.The scale of these donations surprised observers as the Murugappa Group had been a modest political donor over the previous decade.

“Electoral trusts may be legal, but they normalise a system where money determines access, policy, and electoral success,” Parayil Sreerag, a political strategist, told Al Jazeera. Sreerag argued that such a mechanism “favours the ruling party, marginalises smaller movements, and erodes democratic competition and public trust”.

To be sure, corporate funding in India has a long history.

The Birla group of companies was a major financier of Mahatma Gandhi in the years leading up to independence in 1947. Since then, other companies and parties have continued the practice.

“Business houses have traditionally supported ruling political parties,” G Gopa Kumar, former vice chancellor of the Central University of Kerala and a political strategist, told Al Jazeera.

India’s legal framework governing corporate donations to political parties has evolved alongside political shifts. The Companies Act, 1956, first regulated such contributions, barring government companies and young firms, while mandating disclosure of donations. Corporate funding was later banned in 1969 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The ban was lifted in 1985.

A major overhaul came in 2013 with the introduction of Electoral Trusts and the Companies Act, 2013. The new law capped corporate donations at 7.5 percent of average net profits, required board approval, and mandated disclosure, marking a significant attempt at regulation and transparency.

But while the Modi-era electoral bonds between 2018 and 2024 drew the bulk of the criticism over electoral finance from transparency activists, the return to electoral trusts has coincided with what is, in effect, an increase in corporate funding for parties. Between 2018 and 2024, the electoral bonds led to an average of under $350m in total donations per year.

Trusts – to which corporates turned after the bonds were scrapped – donated more than $450m by contrast, in 2024-25.

“Left unchecked, it [soaring corporate funding] risks creating a duopoly between political power and corporate capital,” Sreerag said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Tata Group, the Murugappa Group and the Election Commission of India for their responses to concerns over links between donations and influence, but it has not yet received any response.

Uncovering corruption in election funding

Transparency activists argue that the surge in corporate funding, especially for the ruling party, both reveals the access and influence enjoyed by major firms and sheds light on the disadvantages faced by smaller parties and independent candidates.

Shelly Mahajan, a researcher at the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a prominent Indian election watchdog, said unequal access to private donations undermines political participation and electoral competition.

“Despite decades of reform proposals, the nexus between money and politics persists in India due to weak enforcement and inadequate regulation,” she told Al Jazeera.

To many, the electoral bonds scheme came to epitomise that dark and cosy “nexus”.

In December, Nature magazine published a study on alleged corruption under the scheme, authored by academics Devendra Poola and Vinitha Anna John.

The authors found that newly incorporated companies made unusually large donations soon after their formation, pointing to expectations of gains from the government. In several cases, firms accused of tax evasion or other financial crimes donated after raids by India’s enforcement and investigating agencies, raising concerns of coercive political pressure: 26 entities under investigation bought bonds worth $624.7m, including $223.3m after raids by investigating agencies.

Bond purchases peaked around election cycles. That timing – around elections and after raids – was “significant”, Poola told Al Jazeera. “That sequencing is analytically difficult to dismiss as coincidence.” While the data cannot establish legal intent, Poola stressed that the pattern points to an “institutionalised quid pro quo ecosystem enabled by opacity”.

Yet critics say transparency alone does not resolve the link between public policy and political funding – as the data since the ban on electoral bonds shows.

‘What kind of democracy is this?’

Mahajan, the ADR researcher, said that in its decision to strike down the electoral bonds, the Supreme Court invoked the 2013 law on electoral trusts to reimpose a 7.5 percent cap on corporate donations based on their net profits.

Companies were ordered to disclose both the amounts and the recipients, creating greater scope for public scrutiny and detailed analysis. But that is not happening. Abhilash MR, a Supreme Court lawyer, said large corporate donations raise serious concerns, particularly under Article 14 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees political equality and administrative fairness.

He said there is mounting evidence of generous government incentives followed by large corporate donations.“When policy decisions appear calibrated to facilitate corporate funding, the very idea of a welfare state is undermined,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that proving corruption in courts remains extremely difficult.

“Temporal proximity between policy benefits and donations rarely meets the evidentiary threshold needed to trigger an independent judicial inquiry,” he said. “In such situations, accountability shifts from courtrooms to the public domain.”

Mini S, a politician from the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) party, had hoped for that shift among voters when she contested the 2024 national elections from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Kerala state.

She couldn’t fund air-conditioned vehicles, so her campaign during India’s notorious summer moved through neighbourhoods on hired motorbikes and autorickshaws. She hoped to unseat Shashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat and politician from the opposition Congress party, who had been representing Thiruvananthapuram in parliament since 2009. When the votes were counted, Mini secured just 1,109 votes, while Tharoor won by a landslide. She also forfeited her $275 security deposit.

But for Mini, the outcome was less a personal defeat than an indictment of how Indian elections are fought. Her entire campaign ran on $5,500, she said, an amount much lower than the $105,000 limit set by the Election Commission of India on expenditure by a parliamentary candidate.

“India likes to call itself the world’s largest democracy, but it’s not,” Mini told Al Jazeera. “When corporate money openly funds mainstream parties – through electoral bonds and trusts, often in clear quid pro quo arrangements – and the Election Commission stays silent, what kind of democracy is this?”

In such a scenario, Mini said, government policies “serve corporate interests, not the constitution”.

“Ordinary people are sidelined, and the marginalised are pushed further into the margins. With money of this scale in elections, anyone without corporate backing, like us, is effectively locked out of politics,” she said.