Though India remains fixated on the Middle Eastern war as a distant geopolitical issue, Iran’s inroads into Myanmar should raise concern in New Delhi, because they have security ramifications for India’s volatile North East. Reportedly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has built covert military and trade ties with Myanmar’s military junta, supplying illicit jet fuel shipments, urea to use in munitions and bombs, as well as arms and ammunition.
Myanmar’s junta has used illicit Iranian jet fuel shipments to fuel its fighters bombing civilian targets in small hamlets and villages in rebel-held areas. According to a January 2026 Reuters report, the junta bombed 1,000 civilian targets in the previous 15 months. In October 2025, after Iran’s illicitdelivery of 16,000 tons of jet fuel through Reef, a vessel in its shadow fleet, the junta bombed a school in Vanha village in Chin State.
Myanmar’s junta has used illicit Iranian jet fuel shipments to fuel its fighters bombing civilian targets in small hamlets and villages in rebel-held areas.
The Iranian supplies have enhanced the junta’s drone capabilities, giving it complete air superiority vis-à-vis the insurgent groups, which lack conventional air power. Had it not been for Iran, sanctions would prevent the junta from accessing these products. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Iran’s cash-strapped, sanctions-ridden economy receives a new market for its weapons, for which, theoretically, Myanmar can pay in gemstones to help both countries evade sanctions. Jet fuel fetches a 33 percent premium over Brent crude, which means Tehran most likely earned $123 million from the nine shipments of jet fuel at current market rates.
While American analysts might just chalk up outreach to a desire to expand its diplomatic footprint, the Myanmar strategy seems to be part of Tehran’s game plan to win new friends among sanctioned states and pariahs, from Nicaragua to Eritrea to North Korea. For India, however, the Iran-Myanmar partnership is especially dangerous.
If Iran can reach Myanmar, it likely can expand its footprint in Bangladesh, from where it can nurture ties with Pakistan-supported terror outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and local outfits like Ansarullah Bangla, Harkat-ul-Jihad Al Islami, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, and local Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. While India and Iran long have maintained cordial, if not always friendly, relations, India’s increasingly close partnership with Israel upsets Iran’s ideologically driven regime. With Iranian arms and ammunition, drones, and other advanced weaponry, these groups can become a major threat to South Asian security.
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The nightmare scenario would be Iran serving as the glue to cement the convergence of India’s rivals, China and Pakistan, with Myanmar and Bangladesh.
urther, under the Islamist government of Prime Minister Tariq Rahman, Bangladesh is radicalizing, with entities like Jamaat-e-Islami strengthening their strategic, religious and economic footprint. Jamaat is staunchly anti-India and maintains strong ties with Turkey and Pakistan. Ideologically, Iran’s regime has always supported Sunni Islamist groups like Jamaat and the Muslim Brotherhood because they insist on an Islamic religious leadership, as a Sunni variant of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s theory of velayat-e faqih, guardianship of the jurists.
Iranian Qods Force operatives also might support ethnic insurgent groups active in India’s North Eastern Region from bases in Myanmar and Bangladesh to pressure India.
The nightmare scenario would be Iran serving as the glue to cement the convergence of India’s rivals, China and Pakistan, with Myanmar and Bangladesh. Both New Delhi and Washington would be foolish to dismiss Iran’s sanctions-busting scheme with Myanmar as just a minor irritant, when it can snowball quickly into a major threat.
