Staying Power in a Multipolar World Power in a multipolar world lies in the capacity to remain.

By: Dr Bisma Yousuf ( Research Scholar)

Iran today is not merely passing through another episode of unrest, nor is it experiencing a routine confrontation with Western pressure. What is unfolding inside the Islamic Republic is the cumulative outcome of a long historical compression- where ideology, coercion, external siege, and internal exhaustion have converged into a condition of chronic instability. To read Iran only through the optics of sanctions, nuclear negotiations, or street protests is to miss the deeper structural malaise of a state that has failed to renew its political imagination while insisting on permanent mobilisation. Iran is not collapsing in the spectacular sense that outsiders often anticipate, but it is eroding from within, and erosion is always more dangerous because it disguises itself as endurance.

The Islamic Republic was born out of a revolutionary rupture that fused political sovereignty with moral transcendence. Unlike many postcolonial states, Iran did not merely inherit a bureaucratic apparatus; it reconstituted authority around a civilisational claim- that resistance to domination was not just strategic but sacred. For decades, this narrative insulated the regime from the usual cycles of legitimacy loss. Economic suffering could be justified as sacrifice, repression could be rationalised as protection, and dissent could be dismissed as betrayal. The state survived not because it delivered prosperity, but because it monopolised meaning. Yet meaning, when it is frozen, eventually suffocates those it seeks to inspire.

The present unrest in Iran reflects this suffocation. It is not led by a single ideology, class, or organisation; its power lies precisely in its diffuseness. Workers protest alongside students, women alongside traders, the urban poor alongside provincial youth. This is not the uprising of a coherent alternative elite; it is the revolt of a society that no longer believes the state speaks on its behalf. What distinguishes the current moment from previous cycles of dissent is not scale alone, but tone. The language of reform has thinned, patience has expired, and fear- long the regime’s most reliable instrument- has lost some of its disciplining power. When people stop expecting improvement and begin demanding dignity, repression becomes less effective, not more.

The regime’s response has been revealing in its predictability. Instead of introspection, it offers securitisation. Instead of political accommodation, it invokes conspiracy. This reflex is not accidental; it is institutional. The Islamic Republic has spent decades converting every internal challenge into an external plot because externalisation preserves ideological coherence. If unrest is foreign-engineered, the state remains morally intact. But this strategy has diminishing returns. A population that experiences daily economic precarity does not

need foreign instruction to feel dispossessed. Inflation, unemployment, currency collapse, and systemic corruption are not imported phenomena; they are lived realities. When a state insists on denying the obvious, it forfeits credibility even among its residual supporters.

Yet it would be intellectually lazy- and politically dangerous- to reduce Iran’s crisis to domestic misgovernance alone. Iran exists within a global system that punishes deviation selectively and rewards compliance strategically. Sanctions have not merely constrained Iran’s foreign policy; they have reshaped its internal political economy. The strangulation of formal markets has empowered informal networks, militarised commerce, and concentrated power in institutions least accountable to society. The paradox is stark: sanctions imposed in the name of weakening authoritarianism have entrenched authoritarian structures by making survival contingent on coercive control. This is not a defence of the Iranian state; it is an indictment of a global order that substitutes punishment for politics.

Regionally, Iran operates in an environment where norms have collapsed and power is exercised through calibrated instability. The Middle East today is not governed by sovereignty in any meaningful sense; it is governed by escalation management. Wars are avoided not because peace is desired, but because total collapse is inconvenient. Iran has learned to survive in this environment by externalising its strategic depth- through proxies, alliances, and asymmetric deterrence. But external projection cannot indefinitely compensate for internal erosion. A state whose legitimacy frays at home becomes more reliant on symbolic defiance abroad. This is why moments of internal crisis often coincide with heightened rhetorical belligerence: not because the state is strong, but because it is anxious.

This anxiety is visible in Iran’s posture today. It oscillates between defiance and defensiveness, between threats of retaliation and pleas for recognition. The regime understands that it is encircled not only geopolitically but economically, yet it also knows that capitulation would unravel the ideological foundations on which it rests. This produces paralysis. Reform risks ideological dilution; repression risks social rupture. The result is stagnation enforced by force- a condition that can persist, but not indefinitely.

It is within this layered crisis- historical, economic, ideological, and geopolitical- that external actors recalibrate their strategies. Iran’s instability is not treated as a human tragedy but as a strategic variable. Great powers do not ask how Iran can stabilise itself; they ask how instability can be leveraged. This is the moral emptiness of contemporary geopolitics, where suffering becomes opportunity and restraint is mistaken for virtue. Iran is thus trapped between its own rigidity and an international system that has little incentive to see it recover with dignity.

Only after grasping this reality does it make sense to examine India’s position. Any approach that begins with India’s diplomacy without understanding Iran’s condition risks becoming procedural rather than analytical. India is not dealing with a normal partner undergoing temporary turbulence; it is engaging a state whose internal contradictions are reaching a critical threshold. How India responds to such a moment tells us far more about India than about Iran.

For decades, India’s engagement with Iran was guided by geography and necessity rather than ideological affinity. Iran offered energy security, access to continental trade routes, and a strategic counterweight to Pakistan and China -centric constraints. Importantly, Iran did so without demanding political alignment or moral subservience. This made the relationship functional, not romantic. But functionality requires consistency, and it is precisely consistency that has eroded in India’s approach.

If Iran today represents a state struggling to reconcile sovereignty with internal legitimacy under relentless external pressure, India represents a different political condition altogether: a state navigating constraint without surrender, pressure without panic, and ambition without theatrical defiance. To read India’s engagement with Iran through the narrow prism of alignment or silence is to misunderstand how contemporary strategic autonomy actually operates. Autonomy in a multipolar world is no longer expressed through loud dissidence or romanticised non-alignment; it is exercised through selective engagement, institutional patience, and the ability to remain present where others are forced to withdraw. In this sense, India’s approach to Iran is not evasive but evolutionary- shaped by an acute awareness of power asymmetries and long historical memory.

India’s foreign policy establishment understands something that is often lost in public commentary: Iran is not a problem to be solved but a geography to be managed. Regimes may change, sanctions may fluctuate, and internal unrest may intensify or recede, but Iran’s location- connecting South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, and the Caucasus- remains immutable. India’s strategy, therefore, has been to insulate long-term interests from short-term volatility. This is not indecision; it is structural thinking. While many states respond to Iran episodically, India has chosen continuity over reaction, a choice that becomes visible not in speeches but in infrastructure, logistics, and institutional presence.

The Chabahar Port is the clearest material expression of this approach. Unlike rhetorical commitments that evaporate under pressure, Chabahar represents India’s willingness to invest politically and economically in Iran even when the international environment is hostile. It is not merely a port; it is a statement of intent. By persisting with Chabahar despite sanctions regimes, diplomatic uncertainties, and shifting regional alignments, India has demonstrated a form of strategic autonomy that is neither confrontational nor submissive. It operates within constraints without internalising them as permanent limitations.

Chabahar allows India to bypass the structural veto imposed by Pakistan on continental connectivity. More importantly, it anchors India physically in a region where influence is increasingly exercised through logistics rather than ideology. In an era where power flows through supply chains, corridors, and access points, India’s investment in Chabahar signals an understanding of twenty-first century geopolitics. It is a quiet assertion that India will not outsource its continental access to the preferences of other powers, whether regional or global.

What distinguishes India’s handling of Chabahar from more impulsive projects elsewhere is patience. India has resisted the temptation to over-politicise the port or frame it as an act of

defiance against the West. Instead, it has embedded Chabahar within a broader discourse of regional development, humanitarian access to Afghanistan, and economic stabilisation. This framing has allowed India to retain Western exemptions while preserving Iranian cooperation- a diplomatic balancing act that requires skill rather than spectacle. Strategic autonomy here is not declared; it is negotiated.

India’s engagement with Iran must also be understood in the context of its broader multipolar worldview. Unlike the Cold War era, where non-alignment was defined by distance from power blocs, today’s multipolarity is defined by the ability to engage simultaneously with competing centres of power without being absorbed by any. India’s relations with the United States, Russia, Iran, the Gulf states, and Israel are not contradictions; they are components of a diversified strategic portfolio. Iran occupies a specific place within this portfolio- not as an ideological ally, but as a necessary partner in regional equilibrium.

Crucially, India has avoided collapsing Iran into a single narrative- either as a pariah state or as a victimised resister. This refusal to moralise simplistically allows India to maintain dialogue even when others retreat into sanction-driven isolation. In diplomacy, presence matters. By remaining engaged- through transport agreements, port operations, and diplomatic channels- India ensures that it retains leverage regardless of Iran’s internal trajectory. This is not an endorsement of repression, nor indifference to suffering; it is a recognition that disengagement rarely produces reform, but often entrenches stagnation.

India’s strategic autonomy is also visible in how it has responded to external pressure. When forced to halt Iranian oil imports, India did not theatrically protest nor permanently burn bridges. Instead, it treated the suspension as contingent rather than terminal. Energy diplomacy was recalibrated, not abandoned. This distinction matters. By keeping channels open and avoiding irreversible positions, India preserved the option of future re-engagement without undermining its broader economic stability. Autonomy, in this sense, lies in preserving choice.

There is also a deeper philosophical coherence in India’s approach. India’s foreign policy tradition- shaped by civilisational continuity rather than revolutionary rupture- privileges endurance over immediacy. Where Iran’s political system is built on perpetual mobilisation, India’s statecraft is built on incremental accumulation. This difference explains why India does not respond to crises with ideological fervour but with institutional calibration. In a volatile region, this temperament becomes an asset rather than a weakness.

In the current geopolitical environment- marked by war in Europe, instability in West Asia, and sharpening great-power rivalry- India’s ability to maintain working relations across divides is itself a form of power. While many states are being forced into binary choices, India has retained room for manoeuvre. Its engagement with Iran, particularly through Chabahar, exemplifies this capacity. It shows that India can uphold partnerships without becoming hostage to them, and resist pressure without converting resistance into dogma.

Importantly, India’s strategy also anticipates a post-crisis Iran. Whether Iran undergoes reform, hardens into deeper authoritarianism, or experiences systemic transformation, India’s continued presence ensures relevance. Infrastructure outlasts regimes. Ports remain when slogans fade. By embedding itself materially rather than rhetorically, India positions itself as a stakeholder rather than a spectator. This is strategic foresight, not hedging.

In this light, India’s conduct toward Iran should not be mistaken for ambiguity. It is a form of disciplined pluralism- an acceptance that the world will not conform to moral symmetry or ideological clarity, and that statecraft must operate in conditions of uncertainty. India’s strategic autonomy lies precisely in its refusal to convert complexity into paralysis or passion. It acts where action is durable, restrains itself where action would be performative, and preserves relationships even when circumstances are adverse.

Iran’s internal crisis, therefore, does not expose Indian weakness; it highlights Indian restraint. In a system where loudness is often mistaken for leadership, India’s quieter method stands out. It neither abandons Iran nor romanticises it. It neither defies the West nor submits to it. Instead, it pursues a long view- anchored in geography, infrastructure, and continuity. finally, India’s engagement with Iran- centred on Chabahar and sustained diplomatic presence- illustrates how strategic autonomy functions in a genuinely multipolar world. It is not a posture of isolation, nor a performance of defiance, but a practice of staying power. In a century defined less by ideology and more by access, connectivity, and endurance, India’s approach may appear understated- but it is precisely this understatement that gives it strength.