New Delhi, April 11 — The Middle East crisis has opened strategic opportunities for India, from expanding domestic strategic petroleum reserves to diversifying energy imports, ORF Deputy Director Vivek Mishra wrote for the Politeia Research Foundation on Saturday. Mishra highlighted that Argentina and the United States have emerged as important alternative suppliers of LPG to India during the crisis, with Argentina more than doubling its exports to India in the first quarter of 2026 year-on-year and US shipments rising sharply in March.
Mishra noted that in the first three weeks of March this year, India imported 176,000 tonnes of LPG from the US, surpassing the 89,000 tonnes received from the Middle East. He added that subsequent waivers on Iranian and Russian crude and petroleum products have widened India’s sourcing options.
The analyst said negotiations in Islamabad will be pivotal in shaping how Iran and the US position themselves on a ceasefire and whether talks can produce a temporary modus vivendi to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He warned, however, that several deeply entrenched issues-such as Iran’s uranium enrichment, possible removal of enriched material, the lifting of sanctions, and other items in Tehran’s 10-point agenda-cannot be resolved in a few meetings.
“For reference, the JCPOA, while being negotiated in peacetime, took more than two years under the Obama administration,” Mishra observed, arguing that the sequence of events since the Gaza war and the ensuing Iran–US–Israel confrontation should prompt India to prepare for an era of recurring conflict interspersed with periods of peace.
“Both war and diplomacy are changing their character in ways that seem to render the traditional toolkits anachronistic,” he wrote, saying the Iran–US war has exposed both strengths and limits of major and regional powers’ military and geopolitical strategies.
Mishra described the conflict as a turning point in modern warfare that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the increased use of drones, new lessons in attrition, a nation fighting for survival, and a test of the credibility of extended US deterrence. He said some of Iran’s 10-point demands-such as continued control of the Strait of Hormuz or US acceptance of Iran’s enrichment-appear to be non-starters.
He added that it will be “extremely challenging” for the Trump administration to impose conditions on Iran or to accept Tehran’s terms, and that continued strikes on Iranian targets by Israel and the US have sown internal consternation, even among those who earlier saw the attacks as a path to regime change. The conflict has also become a testing ground for tactics once considered hypothetical: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the operational use of 30,000‑pound GBU‑57 bunker‑buster bombs have moved from study to reality, with the potential to fundamentally reshape the region and America’s role there.
IANS
Original Source: https://theshillongtimes.com/2026/04/11/india-turns-crisis-into-opportunity-by-augmenting-strategic-petroleum-reserve-capacities-diversifying-imports/
Category: NATIONAL,News Alert
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Publish Date: 2026-04-11 21:26:00
