Why An ‘Unstable’ Iran Is a Geopolitical Test India Did Not Want

As protests spread across Iranian cities, threatening to bring down the Islamic regime, India has stayed cautious and largely silent. New Delhi has avoided openly backing Iranian protesters or calling for regime change, choosing instead to protect its strategic interests. For India, the key concern is not whether Iran's clerical leadership can survive the unrest, but what a weaker or unstable Iran would mean for an already tense regional environment. India's relationship with Iran has never been based on ideology. It is driven by geography and necessity. With Pakistan blocking land access to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Iran remains India’s only practical western route to the region.Projects like the Chabahar port are critical for India’s connectivity

plans and for maintaining influence beyond South Asia. Iran has also served as a counterbalance to Pakistan in the region, making stability in Tehran an important consideration for New Delhi.

Chabahar Port: India’s gateway to Central Asia

With Pakistan denying India overland access, Iran became central to New Delhi’s westward connectivity plans. For decades, it has served as India’s most practical land route to Afghanistan and Central Asia, with the Chabahar Port at the core of this strategy.India is a key partner in developing the Chabahar port, located in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province on the southern coast. Built with Indian support, Chabahar was meant to give India direct access to the Iranian coast, bypass Pakistan completely, and connect further to Afghanistan and Central Asia through road and rail links. New Delhi currently operates the Shahid Beheshti terminal at the port.Any regime change that leads to prolonged instability in Iran could put these projects and India’s access plans at risk.

A counter to Sunni extremists

Iran’s importance to India is not just geographic but also strategic. Despite being a Muslim-majority country, Tehran has never aligned itself with Pakistan’s anti-India stance. Instead, Iran has consistently opposed Sunni extremist groups that threaten Shia communities and have also targeted Indian interests over the years.Groups such as the Taliban and ISIS have carried out attacks against Shias in Iran, prompting Tehran to deploy forces like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to counter them. These are the same militant networks that have attacked Indian targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If Iran were to weaken, Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia could grow.

As the world’s largest Shia-majority power, Iran has long acted as a counterweight to Sunni extremism in the region. A collapse of Iran’s clerical system, or its replacement by a Sunni-leaning government aligned with Gulf states or the United States, could leave the region more uniformly Sunni-dominated. For India, losing Iran as a stabilising counterweight would add to regional insecurity and instability.

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Why China could make inroads

Iran’s growing tilt towards China is another reason India must be cautious about instability in Tehran. In 2021, Iran and China signed a widely publicised 25-year strategic cooperation agreement, marking a clear shift in Tehran’s external partnerships. Trade figures underline this trend. In 2024-25, China emerged as Iran’s largest export destination, with Iranian exports worth over $14.5 billion (mostly oil and gas) flowing to Beijing.As Western sanctions tightened, Iran increasingly relied on China to purchase its discounted oil and to support key infrastructure projects. This dependence has deepened economic and strategic ties between the two countries.If Iran were to undergo a regime change or slip into prolonged instability, China could stand to gain even more. A weakened or externally backed government in Tehran may lean further on Beijing for investment, political support, and security assistance, potentially reducing India’s strategic space in the region.