Condemning the unilateral attack on Iran as well as the retaliatory strikes by Iran in its neighbourhood, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) questioned India’s silence on the developments.
In a post on social media platform X, Mr. Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must speak up. “Does he support the assassination of a head of state as a way to define the world order? Silence now diminishes India’s standing in the world,” he said.
The Opposition leader said escalating hostilities between the United States, Israel and Iran are “pushing a fragile region toward wider conflict”.
“Crores of people, including nearly a crore Indians, face uncertainty. While security concerns are real, attacks that violate sovereignty will only worsen the crisis. The unilateral attacks on Iran, as well as Iran’s attacks on other Middle Eastern nations, must be condemned,” Mr. Gandhi said.
The Opposition leader asserted that violence begets violence and that dialogue and restraint remain the only path to peace.
“India must be morally clear. We should have the courage to speak plainly in defence of international law and human lives. Our foreign policy is rooted in sovereignty and the peaceful resolution of disputes and it must remain consistent,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi’s post came on a day when the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, in an opinion piece in a newspaper, said India’s silence over the targeted assassination of Ayotollah Seyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei is not “a neutral position but its abdication”.
Echoing a similar position, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said India’s silence and refusal to condemn the unprovoked attack on Iran’s sovereignty is a “fundamental departure and an abdication of India’s time-tested foreign policy to uphold international law, UN charter & national sovereignty”.
“It is ironic that as the current chairman of BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa], India has been isolated to a minority of one, with all other BRICS having condemned the attack. This is a national embarrassment on which the government must answer,” Mr. Sharma said in a post on X.
