Red Sea conflict prompts India’s navy to flex its muscles

India is deploying a growing number of warships to counter rebel attacks on commercial ships plying around the Middle East, while steering clear of joining the official U.S.-led force in the Red Sea, as it looks to protect its ties with Iran.

Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked ships passing to and from Egypt’s Suez Canal, a heavily used trade route vital to India’s crude oil imports. The Houthis, a militia backed by Iran, said they are targeting ships in retaliation over Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas. The attacks have snarled global shipping and widened the Middle East conflict. In recent days, after U.S. and U.K. strikes on Houthi weaponry, the rebels have turned their attention to U.S. ships, according to The Wall Street Journal.

India has sent 10 warships to the area stretching from the north and central Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Aden, up from the two that are usually stationed in the region, according to serving and former security officials. 

The ships are monitoring India-flagged ships, but have also been the first responders in a number of recent incidents. Last week, India’s guided-missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam responded to a distress call from U.S.-owned bulk carrier Genco Picardy, which came under a drone attack in the Gulf of Aden.

Yet India isn’t participating in the U.S.-led coalition to ensure safe passage to vessels in the Red Sea, largely because of its policy of participating only in United Nations missions, said Indian officials and experts. U.S. allegations that Iran is backing the Houthi attacks also complicate India’s response, given New Delhi’s friendly ties with Tehran.

Last week, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar raised concerns over attacks on commercial ships in Tehran on a visit that was days after the U.S. and the U.K. launched airstrikes on Houthi targets.

“Joining a U.S.-led coalition would mean looking at the conflict through the prism of the U.S….where the U.S. has taken a position that this is Iranian instigation,” said Harsh Pant, vice president for foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based international relations think tank. India has long sought to telegraph its independence from the influence of major powers in its foreign policy dealings.

Indian navy operations nevertheless reflect growing cooperation with the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China, and rely in part on U.S. military equipment, officials said. A $3 billion military procurement deal with the U.S. for 31 Predator drones, half of which are intended for the navy, will further boost India’s capabilities. A delivery date hasn’t been set yet.

“There is already adequate coordination happening with the U.S. and other like-minded nations on the naval front. All the channels of communications are open,” said Biswajit Dasgupta, a former vice admiral and commander-in-chief of India’s Eastern Naval Command.

India closely monitors Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean region, and its officials say periodic efforts by China to dock research vessels in nearby countries are a pretext for maritime surveillance. The Indian navy is currently watching a Chinese research vessel on its way to the Maldives at a time when the archipelago nation’s new President Mohamed Muizzu is looking to deepen ties with Beijing, and end a longstanding but small Indian troop presence.

In recent days, India diverted its two Predator drones—a basic version of the tool on lease from the U.S.—from routine operations to provide precision footage over troubled ships. In one such incident this month, the drone surveillance was part of an operation by Indian marine commandos to thwart a hijack attempt aboard Liberian-flagged bulk carrier MV Lila Norfolk in the Arabian Sea, the Indian navy said.

In a little over a decade, the navy has added more than a dozen warships armed with missiles and torpedoes that are all produced domestically. The additions bring the total number of warships in India’s fleet to 140, and the navy aims to add about half that number to its fleet in the next few years, with almost all of them made in India. 

The navy began ramping up operations in around 2017, putting specialized equipment and personnel on warships on routine patrol to equip them to quickly respond to a range of distress calls, from hijacking to natural disasters, according to Indian officials. Since 2018, the Indian navy has also been operating a maritime security-information-sharing hub that receives real-time intelligence on vessel movements via radar stations scattered across Indian Ocean nations.

This year, India became a full member of the multilateral Combined Maritime Forces initiative, based in Bahrain with representatives from a dozen countries including the U.S., Australia, Japan, U.K., Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The new operation to secure the Red Sea is taking place under that initiative.

“Our navy vessels, navy ships are there, patrolling the area and they are trying to do their best to secure the Indian shipping lines and giving support to others,” Randhir Jaiswal, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said last week. “So that is where we are, we are looking at the unfolding situation. We aren’t part of any multilateral arrangement as of now.”

At least one of the attacks has come surprisingly close to India. In late December, Japanese-owned tanker MV Chem Pluto, was headed from Saudi Arabia to India when it was struck about 200 nautical miles off the Indian coast. The U.S. military said the drone was fired from Iran.

Jaishankar’s recent visit to Tehran also visit also coincided with Iran’s strikes in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, at what it said were anti-Iran groups, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Pakistan.

In a joint statement with the Iranian foreign minister, Jaishankar said the international community was concerned about the increased risks to shipping, which also threaten India’s economic interests.

“This fraught situation isn’t to the benefit of any party and this must be clearly recognized,” said Jaishankar.