New Delhi: When Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X this week, he was not really speaking to India – but it revived a raw nerve about New Delhi’s foreign policy direction.“The US spent months on bullying India into ending oil imports from Russia,” he posted on X. “After two weeks of war with Iran, the White House is now begging the world – including India – to buy Russian crude. Europe thought backing illegal war on Iran would win US support against Russia. Pathetic.”The U.S. spent months on bullying India into ending oil imports from Russia. After two weeks of war with Iran, White House is now begging the world—incl India—to buy Russian crude.Europe thought backing illegal war on Iran would win U.S. support against Russia.Pathetic. pic.twitter.com/fbkrXpXa9P— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) March 13, 2026He was responding to a Financial Times report that Russia was making $150 million a day from the fallout of the US-Iran conflict. With the Strait of Hormuz disrupted and Brent crude spiking past $100 a barrel, India and China had surged their Russian crude purchases. Moscow was tightening its grip on energy markets at the expense of Gulf producers, and doing so on the back of a crisis Washington had created.The sequence he described is worth re-examining against the record.Russian crude accounted for 0.2% of India’s oil imports before 2022. After Western sanctions pushed Moscow to offer steep discounts following its invasion of Ukraine, India became the largest single buyer of discounted Russian crude. Purchases peaked at over two million barrels per day in mid-2025.Since August 2025, the United States maintained a 25% tariff on India specifically tied to its Russian energy purchases, which was on top of so-called reciprocal tariffs that had pushed total American tariffs on some Indian goods to 50%, the highest imposed on any major trading partner. By January 2026, India’s Russian crude imports had fallen to roughly 1.1 million barrels per day.When a trade deal was announced in early February, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said India had “committed to no longer purchasing Russian oil.” President Trump claimed prime minister Narendra Modi had personally agreed to stop buying Russian crude and switch to American and Venezuelan supplies instead. The 25% tariff was folded into the final agreed rate and dropped.The Indian prime minister has kept a studied silence in public on the matter. The Indian government’s public response to Trump’s claim was a studied non-answer.MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, speaking on February 5, said “ensuring the energy security of 1.4 billion Indians is the supreme priority of the government” and that diversification of energy sourcing “is at the core of our strategy.” He neither confirmed nor denied what Trump or Leavitt had said.Foreign secretary Vikram Misri, speaking four days later, deflected to oil companies, saying procurement decisions were made “based on market conditions” and that “national interest will be the guiding factor for us in our choices.” Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, in a separate interview, said “the trade deal does not decide who will buy what and from where.” But, across all three responses, the US account of what Modi had committed to was left unchallenged.The Iran conflict has demonstratively shown that India’s energy policy is at the mercy of Washington’s whims.It was Trump’s decision to beginning striking Iran in late February, followed by Tehran’s retaliation, effectively disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 2.5 to 2.7 million barrels of India’s daily crude imports flow, largely from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. Brent spiked past $100. Russian crude, routed through established channels, became attractive again.On March 5, the US Treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil already at sea. Speaking on Fox Business the following day, treasury secretary Scott Bessent explained the decision as a reward for India being “very good actors”. “We had asked them to stop buying sanctioned Russian oil this fall. They did. They were going to substitute it with US oil. But to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world, we have given them permission to accept the Russian oil.”Five days later, Leavitt echoed that framing at the White House briefing, saying the administration had “temporarily permitted” India to resume limited Russian oil purchases because “our allies in India have been good actors.”India, which reduced its Russian crude purchases under American tariff pressure, is being waved back toward the same supplies – this time with a 30-day permission slip from the US Treasury.Araghchi’s post on X stings because he wrote it as the foreign minister of a country with whom India had halted oil trade when the US reimposed sanctions in 2019. Now, with tensions in the Gulf threatening energy flows, New Delhi finds itself needing Tehran’s cooperation to steady its supplies.