Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday (March 19, 2026) said he understands the Indian government's desire to take a cautious stand on the conflict between U.S.-Israel and Iran, and hoped that it could make a public call to both sides to end the war quickly.
In an interview with PTI, the former Minister of State for external affairs also stated that the government should have immediately offered public condolences to Iran over the death of its former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and acted on similar lines as it had done in the aftermath of the demise of then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Iran-Israel war updates on March 19, 2026
Mr. Tharoor asserted that in the current circumstances, a good group of countries not party to the conflict on either side could go to both sides and ask them to call off the conflict, and India should be at the forefront of this.
Asked about assertions from various quarters that India should have condemned the assassination of Khamenei in a U.S.-Israel strike, Mr. Tharoor said, "I don't know about condemning it, but we should certainly have condoled it. After all (he was) the spiritual leader of a country with which he have friendly relations. It would have been appropriate, the day it happened, for us to express public condolences and share the grief of his loved ones and of his nation just as two years ago when [former] President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, we immediately issued a condolence as well as announced national mourning." Mr. Tharoor noted that the moment the Iranian embassy opened the condolence book, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri went and signed the book, which was a "good thing", he said.
