War in West Asia and its impact on South Asia

By Sudeep Chakravarti

Irrespective of whether the US-Israel war with Iran proves to be short-term, medium-term or long-term, South Asia is in for a rough ride this year and beyond with socio-economic, political and security vulnerabilities exposed across the region.

Razor sharp mitigating responses and enduring competence will be required by all countries in this region beset by bloated kleptocracies, totalitarian impulses, on-edge youth, and negative energies of slowed employment and visible, deepening inequities of income and opportunity.

Moreover, regional and extra-regional dependencies will be rewired.

This will hold true even if the war were to come to a hard stop by the time you read this in early April 2026, and the Strait of Hormuz reopens to shipping.

As for India, according data drawn from data and analytics firm Kpler, Morgan Stanley, India’s ministry of petroleum and natural gas, and its petroleum planning & analysis cell, the Hormuz blockade by Iran in response to attacks initiated by the US and Israel on February 28, choked off 56 per cent of the country’s oil supply and about 80 per cent of its gas. (Japan’s Hormuz dependence exceeds 70 per cent; China a little less than 50 per cent.)

And in terms of geopolitical optics, India had its hubris of presumed maritime influence handed to it on a platter when a US Navy submarine attacked and sank an Iranian naval vessel on its way back from exercises off the coast of Visakhapatnam in the Bay of Bengal. It proved yet again what Chinese warships and its so-called research vessels had proved for several years: that the Indian Ocean was far from an Indian ocean. It must also hurt to see Pakistan and China forming a tag team to propose an agenda for mediation and an end to the US-Israel war with Iran. And see Pakistan, along with Türkiye—with which India has gone cold in the past year—work with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to offer another platform for mediation.

We discussed outcomes and the ways ahead in end-March 2026, at a briefing