Forthright
The Congress may be celebrating a bypoll victory in Kerala’s Palakkad constituency, but beneath the surface, the party is in deep and irreparable turmoil. One electoral win does not hide the festering crisis within, especially when one of the party’s most articulate, internationally admired, and electorally viable leaders—Shashi Tharoor—is showing all signs of drifting away….
Twelve days, a few hundred Iranian missile silos reduced to dust, and a Middle Eastern ceasefire—welcome to modern peacekeeping, Trump style. Forget Geneva conventions and UN diplomacy. Who needs shuttle talks and backchannel negotiations when you have B-52s and “fire and fury”? Donald J. Trump, the man who once threatened North Korea with “total destruction,”…
So now the world is worried. Condemnations are pouring in after the United States joined Israel in striking Iranian nuclear sites. Suddenly, the chorus for “restraint” and “diplomatic solutions” grows louder across Western capitals. But where was this outcry when Iran was rapidly enriching uranium, aiding terror groups, and issuing death threats against Israel and…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a clarion call that no civilized society can afford to ignore: stand with Israel, or stand with terror. In a message that cuts through the fog of hypocritical diplomacy and moral cowardice, Netanyahu has reminded the world that Israel is not merely fighting Hamas or Hezbollah—it is confronting…
India’s firm stand exposes the US double play After years of projecting himself as the global peacemaker, US President Donald Trump has dropped all pretenses. Following a 35-minute phone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—just before his scheduled meeting with Pakistan’s new Army Chief General Asim Munir—Trump appears to have pivoted from peacemaker to…
Once again, the Congress party has scored a spectacular self-goal—this time by mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Canada for the G7 summit. In its desperation to criticise the man it loves to hate, the so-called principal opposition has ended up exposing not only its ignorance of international diplomacy but also its increasing irrelevance…
There’s something deeply revealing about the Indian Opposition’s reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi receiving yet another international honour — this time, the highest civilian award from Cyprus. Instead of celebrating the growing stature of India on the global stage, the usual suspects from the Congress and its allies, besides the Left have once again…
Two southern Chief Ministers—Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan and Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin—have crossed a constitutional red line by issuing public statements on India’s foreign policy. In a federal democracy like India, foreign affairs are exclusively a matter for the Union Government. While state leaders may privately express disagreement, going public with condemnations—especially on sensitive international matters—is…
By all available measures, former President Donald Trump’s troubles—both on the home front and across volatile global theatres—are not just growing, they’re compounding at a pace that even his loyalist base can no longer ignore. The latest U.S. decision to evacuate non-essential diplomats and military families from multiple locations in the Middle East is a…
By appointing Pakistan—a state long accused of nurturing, sheltering, and glorifying terrorism—as the Vice-Chair of its Counter-Terrorism Committee, the United Nations has once again shown why its credibility is in tatters. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, never known to mince words, rightfully called out this grotesque contradiction for what it is: “Asking a cat to…
