India’s stance on the US-Israel attack on Iran, and the latter’s widening of the conflict to Arab countries and oil trade routes, need not be governed by “emotional” reasons, a top Indian ex-diplomat has said.. India’s PM Narendra Modi with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in a car during his visit to Israel in February. (Photo: X/@narendramodi/ANI File). “The issue is not whether India should be ‘for’ or ‘against’ Israel, the United States, Iran, or the Gulf states in some emotional or ideological sense,” wrote Nirupama Menon Rao, former foreign secretary, on X.. “The issue is whether any of these relationships, as they are currently conducted, advance India’s long-term interests without narrowing India’s strategic autonomy,” she argued.. Follow | Live updates on the US-Iran conflict. Rao, who served as India’s envoy to the US, China and Sri Lanka during her career, opined that India’s strength has “always lain in balance — in keeping multiple relationships alive at once, in speaking across divides, and in refusing to let any one partnership become a trap”.. Also read | Jaishankar, Iran FM discuss Brics role in regional security amid West Asia conflict. She said that must not be seen as weakness: “It is the essence of serious statecraft for a country of India’s scale, geography, and civilizational depth.”. About “recent years”, she said, the tone of the domestic discourse has changed.. “There is a marked tendency to see Israel less as a partner than an object of admiration, even envy — a symbol of unapologetic force, swift retaliation, and the fantasy of unencumbered power. Much of the media has climbed aboard this train, cheering Israel less as a state with which India has specific interests than as a projection of their own ideological desires,” she argued.. Saying that’s where “the danger lies”, she further argued that admiration for Israeli military prowess cannot be seen as strategy. “It is emotional substitution… We cannot afford to inherit another country’s siege mentality as if it were our own doctrine.”. Also read | India, US close to critical minerals deal, big announcement expected soon: Envoy Sergio Gor. “The real test for India is not whether it can applaud force. It is whether it can preserve room for manoeuvre, protect its energy and maritime interests, maintain credibility across West Asia, and keep its own voice. A country like India should not suffer from ‘Israel envy’. It should have the confidence to be itself. I am sure it can,” she said.. India has sought to project the image of an equidistant votary of peace in the US-Iran conflict, even as PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel just ahead of the war breakout on February 28 was seen by the Opposition as a tacit pre-backing of the US and Israel.. PM Modi visited Israel on February 25–26, meeting with PM Benjamin Netanyahu and addressing a special session of the Knesset in Jerusalem, where he declared, “India stands with