Opportunity for Iran, Setback for US and Bitter Lesson for India; Manipur Still on the Brink; Sanskari Cover Up; Shell Party Divided on Merger with TMC Rebels
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Snapshot of the day
June 15, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Whether the ceasefire lasts just 60 days or gets converted to a more durable peace, it is clear that the memorandum of understanding signed electronically by Iran and the United Stated with Pakistani mediation over the weekend is a stunning victory for Tehran. The agreement will be be signed formally by the US and Iran later this week in Geneva, when the text will also become public. However, based on what is known so far, analysts agree the deal amounts to a major setback for Tel Aviv and Washington – which have been forced to abandon a programme they sought to impose through an illegal and unsuccessful war of aggression.
Far from parlaying India’s historic diplomatic strengths in the region, Prime Minister Modi was unable to play any role in the end to hostilities. His predecessors – Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee – may not have fared any better but they certainly would not have done what Modi did: hitching himself to what he thought would be the winning side.
In his Long Cable dispatch below, Manoj Joshi talks us through the deal and its ramifications – and what the consequences of Modi’s reckless embrace of the aggressors are likely to be.
Currently on his 100th foreign trip (to Slovakia and France) as PM since 2014, Modi welcomed the “understanding reached between the United States and Iran on ending the conflict in West Asia, which has caused serious economic disruption across the world and led to loss of life in many countries.” His statement came many hours after most world leaders had spoken, and unlike them, made no mention of the role of the mediators.
Speaking of whom, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif has been going out of his way to single out Field Marshal Asim Munir for the role he played in hammering out the Iran-US agreement. “Throughout this period, he was awake all day and night,” Al Jazeera quoted Sharif as telling Pakistani legislators.
“adding that Munir had “sacrificed day and night to extinguish the flames of war”. There were many moments, he said, when “it felt like the negotiations would come to a halt” but the army chief did not give up. “If this journey had not continued,” Sharif said, “the dream of peace would have been shattered.”
Pakistan upstaging India in diplomacy is a monumental failure of the Modi government’s foreign policy, writes Sanjay Jha. “In Switzerland, with Pakistan as an interlocutor, the historic USA-Iran détente will be signed. Elsewhere in the globe, some will be vanquishing a broken opposition to shards. And drooling over a film called Dhurandhar.”
Modi will attend the G7 summit in Evian, France along with the leaders of nine other ‘outreach’ countries – Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.
In a telephone call over the weekend with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, External Affairs minister S Jaishankar protested the killing of Indian sailors by the US Navy in international waters off the coast of Oman, but Rubio appears not to have taken Indian concerns seriously at all. A former Indian Navy chief, Adm (Retd) Arun Prakash, has said the “meeting between Trump and PM Narendra Modi at the G7 summit in France presents a critical opportunity for the latter to directly convey the nation’s deep disappointment with the
