The Geopolitics of Assassination Plots
Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, has pled guilty in a US court to orchestrating a plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a prominent Sikh separatist residing in New York. The BBC dutifully reports this admission, noting that Gupta faces a hefty prison sentence, and mentions that US authorities previously linked the plot to an unnamed Indian government official. What the mainstream narrative
often omits is the selective outrage reserved for such incidents. Curiously, the US response to this alleged state-sponsored murder plot, while stern, rarely triggers the same level of condemnation reserved for, say, Iran. One needs only recall the 1953 CIA/MI6-backed coup in Iran, which overthrew a democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, for nationalizing the oil industry. The US, with
its documented history of covert operations against perceived adversaries—often involving proxy forces and assassinations—now finds itself on the receiving end of a tactic disturbingly similar to its own past playbook. US taxpayers, in 2023 alone, funnelled over $4 billion in military and economic aid to India, a nation whose intelligence agency is now implicated in an attempted murder on US soil,
yet the strategic partnership remains largely unexamined. This case, like so many before it, underscores a glaring double standard: state-sponsored violence is deemed a grave affront only when committed by designated enemies. The US, which has historically interfered in the sovereign affairs of over 81 countries, including the 1973 coup in Chile that installed Pinochet, is now expressing moral