Derided We Fell On Iran

There is something deeply unsettling about the instinct to laugh when the world is in the midst of a serious negotiation. At a time when tensions between Iran and the US continue to demand delicate handling, reports of Pakistan attempting to position itself as a mediatory interlocutor have elicited, in sections of our media, not analysis but derision. And now, as the talks appear to have failed, the same sections seem less concerned about the consequences of a collapsed peace effort and more inclined to derive satisfaction from the perceived embarrassment of the would-be mediator. Diplomacy, in this telling, is reduced to spectacle; its complexities flattened into a theatre of winners and losers. In that reflex lies a revealing discomfort, not about Pakistan, but, more importantly, about us.

This response is flippant. It also reveals a deeper malaise in our public discourse: a shrinking of perspective that confuses seriousness with cynicism and substitutes analysis for amusement. Diplomacy, particularly in moments of heightened tension, is not an arena for instant gratification. It is a painstaking, often opaque process in which even failure has meaning because it signifies an attempt, however tentative, to resist escalation. To treat such efforts as occasions for mockery is to misunderstand both their purpose and their stakes.

We must remind ourselves that the consequences of the breakdown of talks between Iran and the US ripple outward, destabilising an already volatile region. It has the potential to unsettle global energy markets and heighten the risks of miscalculation in a world where the margin for error is perilously thin. In such a context, any initiative aimed at de-escalation, whether led by established powers or aspiring intermediaries, deserves sober examination. What is particularly troubling is the shift from critique to deriving a sadistic pleasure. The failure of a diplomatic effort, regardless of who facilitated it, is a reminder of how fragile peace remains. Thus, to derive pleasure from such a breakdown is to allow geopolitical rivalries to seep into our moral imagination, where the failure of the “other” becomes a source of satisfaction even when it comes at the cost of collective stability. This is insecurity masquerading as wit, and that certainly is not a good proposition for a country like us with such moral inheritance.

Media narratives play a decisive role in shaping this sensibility because diplomacy—as a complex and multi-layered process—is increasingly being framed as a stage populated by protagonists and antagonists. The slow, deliberate work of negotiation, with its silences, its reversals, its fragile increments of trust, does not lend itself to spectacle. But spectacle is precisely what a hyper-mediated environment rewards. In privileging the dramatic over the substantive, the media risks dulling public sensitivity to what is truly at stake.

Geography, access, historical linkages, and timing often determine who finds themselves at the table. To dismiss it outright is to abdicate the responsibility of understanding and appreciating the initiative. For what does it say of a discourse that cannot accommodate even the possibility of a neighbour occupying diplomatic space, however tentative or transient? It suggests a narrowing of imagination, an inability to recognise that in international relations, agency is enabled by circumstance.

Mediation, in that sense, is rarely an act of altruism as it is, more often, an assertion of relevance. States step into such roles because they perceive an opening, an opportunity to recalibrate their standing or to insert themselves into a consequential process and not necessarily because they are a paragon of virtue. Pakistan’s attempt, whether it might have matured into something substantive or was always destined to remain symbolic, now belongs to the realm of the unrealised. But unrealised efforts, too, carry lessons and therefore to greet their failure with ridicule is to display an intellectual impatience that has little place in matters of statecraft. Underlying this reaction is an unspoken anxiety about the belief that diplomatic space is finite and that one nation’s engagement necessarily diminishes another’s stature. Yet the contemporary international order does not conform to such zero-sum logic. It is characterised by overlapping spheres of engagement, where multiple actors often operate simultaneously, sometimes even redundantly, without guaranteeing resolution. The failure of the Iran-US talks should have reinforced the reality that diplomacy is contingent, iterative, and often inconclusive. Instead, the response in sections of our discourse has reduced it to a scoreboard. This inevitably brings us to the question of India’s place in this evolving landscape. If we set aside some of the developments of the last few years, India has long articulated a foreign policy grounded in strategic autonomy, a willingness to engage across divides without being constrained by rigid alignments. It has drawn upon a moral vocabulary shaped by its own historical experience, even as it has navigated the pragmatic demands of power. Yet the tone of public discourse increasingly appears at odds with this tradition in recent times. A confident nation does not scoff at failure; it studies it and asks what conditions enabled a country to attempt a mediatory role, and why those conditions proved insufficient to sustain it. Were the constraints structural, rooted in enduring geopolitical realities? Or were they circumstantial, shaped by transient alignments of interest? What channels existed, formal or informal? And what, if anything, can be learned from their limitations? These are not questions that lend themselves to quick answers. But they are the questions that serious nations and civilised societies must ask.

The capacity to ask them already exists at our universities and research institutions. Across public campuses, young scholars are engaged in precisely this kind of sustained inquiry, researching, for example, the histories of non-alignment, the architecture of regional security, the long genealogies of India’s civilisational relationships, the domestic politics of states, near and far, with which we share interests, and so on. It is worth noting that the same sections of media which dismiss a neighbour’s diplomatic effort have, at other times, been equally dismissive of such scholarship, branding their pursuits as indulgences unworthy of public expenditure and luxuries in a nation that must prioritise the practical. Yet what could be more practical than understanding the world in which we seek to act? The buzzwords that animate our current ambitions, like innovation, opportunity, and global competitiveness, do not descend upon societies in a vacuum. They are only intelligible and only realisable against a rich background of social, political, cultural, and historical comprehension. A nation that wishes to trade with the world must first understand it. A society that aspires to shape multilateral institutions must have citizens capable of reading their contradictions. The knowledge being produced in these universities, however unheroically and often in very challenging circumstances, is not peripheral to national ambition. It is, in a very real sense, its precondition.

There is also a broader consequence of this reflex of dismissal. In an interconnected world, narratives do not remain confined within national borders. They travel, refracted through media ecosystems and diplomatic perceptions. Dismissive public discourse risks projecting a certain provincialism and an unwillingness to engage with complexity unless it conforms to pre-existing assumptions. That is not the disposition of a society preparing to shape global outcomes; it is the habit of one content to react to them. The deeper concern, then, is not about Pakistan’s diplomatic ambitions, but about our own interpretive habits. The media, as a crucial mediator between events and public understanding, bears a particular responsibility in such moments. Its role is to refine public understanding and sentiment. But when it chooses derision over analysis, it diminishes the quality of public discourse. On the other hand, in choosing reflection over ridicule, we do more than elevate our discourse. We preserve the very conditions that make dialogue possible and in a world as uncertain as ours, that may well be the most important responsibility of all.

(Views expressed are personal)

This article is part of the magazine issue dated May 11, 2026, called "Deried We Fell On Iran ' about Assembly Elections 2026 and how West Bengal may prove to be the toughest battleground for the Bharatiya Janata Party

Manoj Kumar Jha is member of parliament (Rajya Sabha)