S8 Ep607: Sadanand Dhume Sadanand Dhume outlines Narendra Modi’s foreign policy hierarchy, prioritizing the United States and Israel for defense. He notes India’s strategic energy dependence on Gulf nations, leaving Iran as a significantly lower diplomatic priority
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Sadanand Dhume Sadanand Dhume outlines Narendra Modi’s foreign policy hierarchy, prioritizing the United States and Israel for defense. He notes India’s strategic energy dependence on Gulf nations, leaving Iran as a significantly lower diplomatic priority. Modi’s Strategic Hierarchy: Prioritizing the West and Gulf (3)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is John Batchelor. Conversation with Sadan Dumae of the editorial page of the Wall Street |
| 0:05.9 | Journal. He writes the East Disease column about Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and his |
| 0:11.9 | measure of what he can do, what he has said, what he believes or measures about the Gulf Wars, |
| 0:20.3 | about the Iran War, and where he is taking India into the future, |
| 0:26.5 | what that means for Iran, what that means for the Gulf, what that means for the United States |
| 0:30.7 | and its allies. Here's Saddam under comment. In wartime, where does Modi look? He's now the |
| 0:36.5 | president of the bricks, by the way. |
| 0:38.8 | Just so happens right now. |
| 0:41.3 | More of this tonight. |
| 0:43.5 | It means a few things. |
| 0:45.0 | So first of all, it means that he has very pointedly not condemned the U.S. and not condemned Israel. |
| 0:51.3 | And that's because he recognizes that the U.S. and Israel are top-tier relationships for India. |
| 0:58.6 | The U.S. for a variety of reasons, trade, technology, military cooperation, the Indian |
| 1:05.2 | diaspora, you name it. |
| 1:08.3 | But Israel also is increasingly important to India. |
| 1:12.3 | We talked about this last year, |
| 1:16.4 | John, when there was a conflict between India and Pakistan. One of the countries that stood very firmly by India was Israel. And India relies to a great deal on Israel for some of its military |
| 1:23.7 | modernization. So it wasn't going to condemn those two countries. And then the next |
| 1:27.9 | year of the Gulf countries, and these are extremely important for India, there are about 9 million |
| 1:32.2 | Indian citizens in the six GCC countries. Trade between India and those Gulf countries, I'm not |
| 1:38.8 | talking about Iran, I'm talking about the Gulf Arab countries. It's about $180 billion. |
| 1:47.0 | Much of India's LNG imports, the vast majority of India has LNG imports, and this is what people use for cooking, for LNG, I'm sorry, |
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