For years, Washington described India as an indispensable partner, a democratic counterweight to China and a strategic anchor in the Indo-Pacific.

Then the US Navy killed three Indian sailors and America’s top diplomat could not even bring himself to apologise.

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar raised the deaths directly with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a phone call last Friday, reiterating what he called India’s “strong protest” and declaring, in a later social media post, that “such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified”.

Rubio reportedly responded by warning his Indian counterpart that all commercial vessels must immediately comply with US orders in the Strait of Hormuz and that “violations of the US blockade and illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated”.

By this point, the most senior US envoy in New Delhi had already been summoned twice in one week to answer for the military strike on a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman that killed the three Indian mariners on June 10.