It has been a month since Israel and the US launched their war against Iran, and the omens for the US do not look good. Minutes after US President Donald Trump gave a national address about the Iran war, stock markets fell, only recovering a little after Iran’s foreign minister declared that Iran and Oman were working out a formula for managing passage through the Strait of Hormuz. In economics there is a term called “revealed preference.” It can be crudely summarised as your real preference is not what you say, but where you put your money. In less than a day between Trump’s speech and the statement by the Iranian foreign minister, US investors revealed that they trust the latter much more than they trust the former.The Indian government’s revealed preferences tell a different story. It is the current chair of the BRICS grouping, in which three states are party to the conflict – Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. It would be natural to assume that this ‘non-Western grouping’ would take some steps to try and resolve differences between its own members. If so, after a month of war, there has been no movement visible. Instead, India showed up to participate in a 40-nation confab in the UK on the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Unable or unwilling to comment on the illegal war of choice launched by the US and Israel against Iran, including numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure like universities, health centres, and energy plants, India has chosen to criticise Iran’s attacks on the UAE and other Gulf states. At the same time India has quadrupled its import of Venezuelan oil, which the Trump administration now says it runs.The last of our revealed preferences is the choices of other countries, specifically France. On April 3, the first French container ship was allowed passage through the Strait of Hormuz since the beginning of the Israeli/US war on Iran. It does not matter whether the French paid a “toll” to Iran, or if France promised something, instead what really matters is that France, in effect, became the first European country to acknowledge that Iran controls what passes through the Strait. Given that Donald Trump and other members of his administration have said repeatedly that it was for other countries to open passage in the Strait of Hormuz, France has chosen to negotiate with Iran for its gas and oil.Taken together, the three revealed preferences paint a stark picture. Neither US or global markets believe that the Trump administration will be able, or commit the manpower needed, to deal with the Strait of Hormuz crisis. The fact that the US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, has just fired the US Army Chief of Staff in the middle of the war merely deepens the suspicion that the US is not serious about this war. Acting on these revealed preferences, even European countries like France are taking steps to deal with a reality that the US and Israel are not able to shape. Japan, too, has followed France’s lead, with the first Japanese oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Friday after negotiating with Iran. It has 44 more ships still stuck in the Gulf. India, on the other hand, is still waiting for others to take the lead, and is being especially careful not to displease the US.It could be argued that India finds itself in a difficult situation, that the groupings it is a part of do not help, and it cannot take the lead. This ignores the fact that India is the largest and most important actor in South Asia, a region that has specific challenges, and that is deeply impacted by what is happening. Everybody knows that one of the last steps of the Sri Lankan financial crisis occurred when the government stopped importing fertiliser, leading to a massive food and economic crisis in 2021. While the country is in better shape now, the war has almost doubled the price of urea, threatening the current crop season. Bangladesh is already rationing fuel, and might be the first country in line to run out of it due to the war. Nepal is hit in multiple ways: through the price of oil imported through India, the loss of remittances from people working in the Gulf, and higher costs to travel there, as well as higher airline prices impacting its tourist industry. Bhutan has similar problems, though it is vastly less dependent on remittances. Pakistan has also been hit hard, with petrol and diesel prices going up by more than 50%, although its solar boom has helped shield part of its economy. Afghanistan, land-locked, sanctioned and now flooded by returning Afghans from Iran, is probably the worst hit.For a region of nearly 2 billion people facing similar challenges, there is no single actor speaking up. India could easily be that voice, or the convener of the voices, of a quarter of the world’s population. As the chair of the G20 in 2023, it facilitated the entry of the African Union – whose members face similar issues as that of South Asia. This would add another 55 states, and 1.5 billion people, to the mix. In the face of a global crisis, this would truly be the Voice of the Global South.For decades this was the natural home for Indian power and diplomacy – through the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 at the United Nations, through SAARC. But to do this, India has to make a radical break from the hollow diplomacy it has been following for more than a decade, one where it plays (and pays) at the rich countries table, where it rejects South Asia as beneath it, lecturing, browbeating, and blockading its neighbours. And where it does the hard work of trying to manage its exceedingly difficult relationship with Pakistan rather than abandoning SAARC just to deny a meeting in Islamabad. South Asia is our home, and as difficult, poor, and confounding as our neighbours can be, if we cannot make our stand here, if we cannot leverage our own geography, then we will be left nowhere, merely following the diktats of those we call our allies, but who are effectively our masters.Omair Ahmad has worked as a political analyst and journalist in India, the US and the UK.