Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday mounted a sharp attack on the Modi government, accusing it of maintaining a disturbing silence over the targeted killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and warning that such inaction undermines the credibility of India’s foreign policy.
In an article published in The Indian Express, Gandhi described the assassination of Khamenei on March 1 as a grave rupture in contemporary international relations. Iran confirmed that its Supreme Leader had been killed in targeted strikes carried out a day earlier by the United States and Israel, at a time when negotiations were reportedly underway. She argued that the killing of a sitting head of state during ongoing diplomatic efforts marked a serious breakdown of international norms and sovereignty.
Gandhi said what was equally striking as the event itself was New Delhi’s response. According to her, the Government of India refrained from condemning the assassination or addressing what she termed a violation of Iranian sovereignty. She criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for initially focusing on condemning Iran’s retaliatory strike on the United Arab Emirates while not acknowledging the sequence of events that led to it, including what she described as a massive US-Israeli onslaught.
Although the Prime Minister later expressed deep concern and called for dialogue and diplomacy, Gandhi noted that diplomatic engagement had already been in progress before the strikes were launched. She contended that the absence of a clear defence of sovereignty and international law from India raised serious questions about the direction and credibility of the country’s foreign policy.
Calling the government’s stance an abdication rather than neutrality, Gandhi urged that Parliament take up a debate on what she termed the Centre’s troubling silence when it reconvenes for the second part of the Budget session, and stressed the need for India to rediscover and clearly articulate its moral strength in global affairs.