Wars do not merely reshape borders; they also reveal the true architecture of global power. The conflict with Iran has done precisely that, and the state that has emerged most clearly is not one that fired a single shot. It is India.
Writing in the online EurAsian Times, Israeli strategic analyst Shay Gal argues that “India is not a superpower, nor does it aspire to be one. It is something altogether more useful – the world’s first genuine ‘Connector Power’.”
Whilst the great powers jostled to assert dominance and smaller states scrambled to pick sides or find themselves coerced, New Delhi simply kept every line open. From Washington, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Moscow, to Tehran it spoke with all of them, and more importantly, all of them answered.
“This is not fence-sitting dressed up as principle, it is architecture,” Gal says underscoring that “New Delhi aspires to neither being a superpower nor a mediator. It has constructed a web of mutual dependencies so intricate and layered that no significant global arrangement and order – in energy, trade, or security – can be concluded or exist without passing through it.”
The Gulf states view India not merely as a partner but as insurance. For Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, Delhi is simultaneously a customer, supplier, investor, and security actor. That is not a relationship; it is an ecosystem.
The Chabahar port in Iran illustrates this logic with clarity. To see it merely as a commercial venture is to miss the point entirely. It is India’s declaration that it will maintain access to Central Asia regardless of what Washington or anyone else demands. When American pressure on Tehran intensified, India did not sever ties. It simply changed its form of engagement.
With Israel, the relationship has evolved from being a mere procurer of technology to now creating an interlink between a system that produces technology and one that can scale it-allowing India to build its system.
Critics may argue that such studied neutrality carries its own cost. India remains dependent on imported energy, it still relies heavily on imported defence systems, faces an unresolved border with China, and has yet to become a net security provider to the region. It will not fight for any camp unconditionally.
Yet these limitations refine rather than diminish the argument. India is not a superpower. It is something rarer – a ‘connector power’. Not a state that dictates order, but one whose very presence is a precondition for any existing order to survive.
In a world fracturing into rival blocs, a ‘Connector Power’ – one which allows others to operate without friction – may prove the most consequential force of all. The Iran war did not crown India. It simply revealed what was already being built quietly for decades.
