On Iran, Four US Memoirs Show How the Modi Govt Yielded to Trump 1.0
New Delhi: As India continues to maintain silence on the killing of Iranian supreme leader, the Modi government’s uneasy history of buckling under US pressure on Iran is once again under scrutiny. In President Donald Trump’s first term, the Modi government quietly abandoned Iranian crude procurement despite longstanding strategic, economic and connectivity stakes tied to Tehran. Today, as Washington and its allies recalibrate their Iran policy after the assassination, prime minister Modi’s continued silence looks less like strategic autonomy and more like a part of an established pattern of succumbing to American pressure.
Published Trump 1.0-era memoirs point essentially to a substantive, first‑hand account of PM Modi’s response on importing cheap Iranian crude in 2018 and 2019, directly linking US pressure on Iran, Trump’s dismissive attitude towards Modi, and India’s eventual full compliance to American demands. Record shows India yielded entirely to US pressure by May 2019, cutting Iranian crude imports to zero.
According to the memoirs of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the Trump administration’s "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran forced India into a major strategic shift. Despite India’s initial reluctance due to its reliance on discounted Iranian crude, PM Modi ultimately conceded to the Trump’s demand to "zero out" oil imports. Bolton was the hawk pushing hardest to end the waivers and Pompeo executed it while maintaining warmer rhetoric about India as a strategic partner, while Trump applied pressure bluntly to which PM Modi yielded.
In The Room Where It Happened, Bolton describes a White House that was increasingly impatient with India’s "understandable but incomprehensible" arguments for cheaper oil. Bolton notes that India was buying Iranian crude at prices well below the global market because Tehran was desperate.
Bolton highlights a sharp divide: while State Department bureaucrats were sympathetic to India’s arguments, Trump and the "hawks" were not. “In a phone call with Pompeo, Trump had not been sympathetic to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, 'He'll be okay.'” Trump was perhaps confident that the Indian prime minister won’t be able to stand up to him.
India did, in fact, reduce and then completely cease Iranian crude imports in 2019 under this pressure, even though New Delhi had sought waivers and argued the case for continuing limited purchases.
In Never Give an Inch, Pompeo reflects on the bluntness required to enforce this policy. He notes that while he sought to build a "transformative" relationship with India to counter China, he was "on the horn constantly" to pressure oil-poor nations to abandon Iranian crude. To those who complained about the unfairness of losing their energy security, Pompeo’s response must have come from his personal philosophy: "Life isn’t fair."
In With All Due Respect, Nikki Haley recounts her 2018 visit to New Delhi where she directly urged India to "rethink" its ties with Iran. She notes that while India’s history with Iran was deep, she made it clear that the US expected India to "rethink" its relationship. She describes the Indian side as being in a difficult "balancing act," but notes their realisation that the US alliance was the higher priority.
In A Sacred Oath, Mark Esper, who was US defence secretary under Trump for most of 2019-20, touches on the strategic side, noting that India's willingness to "zero out" oil imports, when asked by the Trump administration, was seen as a necessary "key test” of India-US partnership. He wrote, “India’s full compliance with our request, despite the economic cost and the domestic political pressure Modi faced, was a pivotal moment. It proved that the Prime Minister was willing to align India’s strategic interests with ours, even in the face of 'maximum pressure' from Washington.”
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