India Is Playing Every Side of the Iran War

India has once again pulled off something that genuinely should not be possible. According to Bloomberg, citing a senior official on board one of the vessels, the Iranian Navy was on the radio the entire time the Indian LPG tanker was crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran took down the ship's flag, name, origin port, destination port, and the nationality of every crew member on board, all of whom were Indian, and then personally guided them along an agreed route through Iranian territorial

waters. The crew had been sitting anchored in the Persian Gulf for 10 days, waiting for this call. When it finally came on the morning of March 13th, they prepared their life rafts before entering the strait. They crossed with their AIS transponders switched off and no functioning GPS because of Iranian

jamming, which meant the crossing took hours longer than it should have. But for the first time, they had Iranian guidance and protection on their side the whole way through. On the other side, Indian Navy warships were waiting to escort them out, flying the Indian flag higher than usual. Think about the position India has engineered here.

It has a military data-sharing agreement with the United States, sheltered an Iranian warship in Kochi while the war was actively ongoing, and now has the Iranian Navy personally escorting its tankers through a waterway where fewer than 100 commercial ships have crossed since March 1st, and over 40,000 sailors remain stranded on the other side. India never picked a side and is now the only country with a direct line to the people controlling India never picked a side and is now the only country with a direct line to the people controlling

the world's most important oil route.