3 min readNew DelhiMar 16, 2026 02:54 PM IST
As two India-bound ships have got safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the last few days, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said there is no “blanket arrangement” with Iran for Indian-flagged ships and that “every ship movement is an individual happening”.
Jaishankar has had four telephone conversations with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi since the war started on February 28.
In an interview with the UK-based Financial Times daily, Jaishankar said that negotiations between New Delhi and Tehran, which allowed two Indian-flagged gas tankers to pass through the Strait on Saturday, were an example of what diplomacy could achieve. “I am at the moment engaged in talking to them and my talking has yielded some results,” he said.
“This is ongoing. If it is yielding results for me, I would naturally continue to look at it.” “Certainly, from India’s perspective, it is better that we reason and we coordinate and we get a solution than we don’t,” he added. “So if that sort of allows other people to engage, I think the world is better off for it.”
Jaishankar was referring to the recent passage of two Indian-flagged vessels, Shivalik and Nanda Devi. The tankers, carrying approximately 92,712 metric tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas, are en route to the Indian ports of Mundra and Kandla, both in Gujarat.
Araghchi told CBS on Sunday that Iran was “open” to countries that want to discuss “safe passage of their vessels”.
However, Araghchi denied that Iran had received anything in exchange, citing a “history of dealing with each other . . . which is the basis on which I engaged”. “It’s not an exchange issue,” he said. “India and Iran have a relationship. And this is a conflict that we regard as something very unfortunate. These are still early days. We have many more ships there. So while this is a welcome development, there is continuing conversation because there is continued work on that,” he added.
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Ahead of the meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, he said, “I’d be happy to share with [EU capitals] what we are doing . . . I know many of them have had conversations [with Tehran] as well.”
“Each relationship, frankly, in a way stands on its own merits,” he said when asked if European countries could ape India’s arrangement. “So now, it’s very hard for me to compare this with some other relationship which may or may not have these.”
